Postfeminism

A common misconception regarding postfeminism is that it refers to a period “after the death of feminism,” as if it constituted a postmortem on feminism and signaled that “we don't need feminism anymore.” Postfeminism is a complex term that includes accounting for context, embracing multiple meanings, and reclaiming terms and concepts such as “girl culture.” Some postfeminists embrace aspects of what it means to be a girl in contemporary Western societies and have championed “chick lit” and “chick flicks,” literature and film produced for young-adult female audiences. Girl studies, fat studies, thin studies, and other scholarly fields that previously were not included in the academic canon have been linked to postfeminism. Many postfeminists are participants in larger girl and grrrl power movements. These movements are addressed in other entries in this encyclopedia. Many postfeminists challenge universalized and tacit standards of what it means to be a feminist. They continuously ask, “Feminist according to whom?”

Postfeminism is often linked to the third wave of feminism. The third wave of feminism is more dispersed because of the context in which it exists. It is more globalized and occurs in a sociopolitical environment of neoliberalism. It is often seen by earlier feminist theorists as more individualistic and more about consumption than prior waves of the feminist movements for solidarity. The third wave of feminism is indeed diverse and varied, and while many postfeminists are simultaneously anticapitalists, many also buy into the existing political and economic systems of the dominant culture.

Postmodern, post-structural, and postfeminist theories emerged as a response to their predecessors: modernism, structuralism, and feminism. Many postfeminists, like their feminist foremothers, were (and still are) fed up with the status quo and the existing system, which they believe do not address them. One of the major tenets of post-structuralism, often cited as a chief aspect of the theoretical grounding of postfeminism, adheres to the idea that the individual has the potential to bring the structure to crisis. Some elements of postmodernity that cannot be denied in postfeminism include the ideas of disassociation, technology, isolation, and globalization.

The term postfeminism is no longer used to express opposition to earlier feminist movements but rather has complex meanings and is linked to girl studies, “chick lit,” girl and grrl power movements, and even drag performances.

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With each wave of feminism comes a backlash, as occurs with almost every successful social movement. Many argue that postfeminism emerged in the 1970s and 1980s, when journalists began declaring feminism dead. However, in an age when women still make 88 cents to a man's $1 and some tenure-track clocks stop for women who have babies, it would be extreme for any feminist to say that the movement is no longer needed or that feminists have achieved all that they set out to do. The prefix post can be seen as a misnomer (a declarative of the “true” death of feminism) or it can be seen as a way to separate the current context using an evolutionary perspective. It is not that as a society we are above and beyond feminism, just that the goals of new feminism look different from those of the past. Postfeminist women and men often see themselves as part of two unified movements for gender equality.

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