Emily Maguire: The Accidental Feminist: When lived experience collides with the myth of a post-feminist world.

Session description:

Many of us born after the success of the 1970s women’s liberation movement were raised to think of ourselves as ‘people not genders’. We grew up believing that being female would not affect our opportunities or choices. We rejected the idea that women were oppressed and if we thought about feminism at all it was as an historical movement with no relevance to our futures.

Genuinely believing that sexism was dead we moved into the worlds of work, marriage and motherhood and got quite a shock. We realised that personal declarations of gender blindness are no defence against a world that insists on defining women by their sex. We realised that the ‘limitless' choices women have today are oddly less limitless than the choices of men. We realised that political, economic, sexual, professional, social and domestic equality is far from achieved and that post-feminism is a media myth. We realised that, quite accidentally, we had become feminists.

Topics:

Feminism Gender equality Body image Advertising and mainstream media Work/life balance