the youngs and the olds

Old Women Are Down for Gender Equality, While Young Women Waffle

This is what a feminist looks like.
This is what a feminist looks like. Photo: Louis DeLuca/Corbis

People are always talking about feminism. Feminism this, feminism that. Gender equality this, when can women finally be equal that. All this talk about feminism certainly seems exhausting, but is it exhausting enough to actually turn women off from the idea entirely? A survey performed by the Fawcett Society found that youngs — the dreaded millennial generation that is hated unequivocally by everyone — are less certain about gender equality than their elders. Is feminism fatigue proving itself to be a real problem?

The Fawcett Society polled 8,000 people in the U.K. about their feelings surrounding gender equality, and over 70 percent of women 65 and over agreed that “more needs to be done for men and women to be equal.” On the other hand, only 55 percent of young women between the ages of 25 and 34 (millennials — argh!!) said that more needs to be done for gender equality. Jemima Olchawski, head of policy and insight at the Fawcett Society, told BuzzFeed News about the youngs, “While they were more likely to identify as feminist, they were also more likely to oppose feminism.” Olchawski ventured an explanation for this phenomenon by saying, “among the group where resistance was strongest, one of the things we considered is that is a group trying to establish themselves.”

But there is still a nice majority out there fighting off the fatigue: 62 percent of people polled said that they believed gender equality had not yet been achieved. You don’t say.

Old Women Are Down for Gender Equality