Q: In a recent poll, what percentage of American women considered themselves feminists?
Go on, guess. The answer is after the break. Let me know if you’re surprised…
29%. So I guess that means only 29% of women believe in “a doctrine that advocates equal rights for women?”
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nine comments
Haha, love that comic! Hm, that number is actually higher than I expected. Do you know how many women were polled or where in America?
Posted by Thea
August 17, 2007, 2:43 PM
I saw this stat on a game show last week while I was flipping through the channels. I guessed 30% but didn't stick around to see if the contestant (a young guy in his early 20s) got it right. The funniest part was that his parents were in the audience, and his father was encouraging him to skip the question and take the winnings he already had, while his mother was urging him to answer.
I too am curious about the methodology behind the statistic, in particular how the question was phrased.
Posted by Nicole
August 17, 2007, 2:52 PM
I hunted far and wide for the "poll" itself and couldn't find it. I did however find some interesting statistics that said that among women who were "corporate executives," the stats were much higher- around 53% as I recall.
The game show guy did get the question right by the way: He guessed 23-33%.
Posted by Stacey May
August 17, 2007, 3:35 PM
This statistic makes me very very sad. I wish people would understand that being a feminist is good thing. It seems like no one can understand that.
Posted by Evey
August 17, 2007, 9:44 PM
It's really upsetting that so many women don't understand what feminism is. I didn't know that I was really a feminist until only recently. Prior to that I believed all the stereotypes that feminism meant always comparing my stance to men and that it was all about men-bashing, etc.
These days feminism is so uncool that true feminists are trying to identify themselves by other means, such as Marie Claire's definition of a "fembot". And I think to myself, WTF is going on?!
Posted by Rebecca
August 18, 2007, 11:57 AM
You don't have to consider yourself s feminist to have alliance with ideas that tout feminine power.
It's a term that is very misunderstood, overused, and abused semantically. Recognize that it is also a term that has a negative connotation, which would naturally be avoided at all costs.
Also understand that the term has a racial bias historically that belonged to women who were not of color. There is a lot of socio-political red tape we would have to sort through before we begin to deem it "sad" that women don't consider themselves feminists. I am very proud to be a woman, and strive and argue as much as the next woman- but I would not consider myself a feminist. I consider myself to have feminist alignment.
Posted by M.Shipman
August 18, 2007, 2:43 PM
I'm going to echo what M.Shipman said about racial bias - I think feminism is still associated with second wave feminism - a wave that marginalized the voices of poor women, women of color and women in developing countries. As a woman of color, it took me a while to step forward and begin identifying with the label "feminist" - my choice to embrace this term is related to my process in attempting to reclaim it for myself, and to encourage others to see its connections to issues of transnational feminism. I don't mean to imply that people who hold "feminist" values should make this same choice - I think there is still a lot of work to be done before this term can cross boundaries of race/class/sexual orientation, work that includes committing ourselves to seeing the relationship between various facets of identity.
Posted by obw
August 18, 2007, 11:21 PM
Some really good points here, and it does lead me to wonder if we don't sometimes emphasize the importance of labelling over the importance of the work that actually gets done. Like, what percentage of women are working to overcome obstacles to equality/empower themselves and their friends/support each other emotionally and socially, and so on? It's likely a lot higher than 29%.
Of course, my instinct is to say If you're doing the work, why not just go ahead and call yourself a feminist? But it's maybe not that easy...
When I was younger I didn't understand why female-born transgender people couldn't just identify as female, since to me the term "female" is big enough to encompass way more than the kind of female you see on the cover of Cosmo, and goodness knows I would jump for joy to see more people pushing the definition of "woman". But I've come to realize that though lots of people may give a big fat thumbs up to the idea of "female", they just don't identify as one. The same thing might hold for "feminist".
Posted by Anna
August 19, 2007, 3:44 PM
Thanks OBW and M.Shipman, you make some really good points!
I never took any women's studies classes or knew much about the history of feminism. I started calling myself a feminist largely through my association with Shameless (dirty secret: when I started working with Shameless I did NOT identify as a feminist, didn't like the term and didn't see it as reflective of my identity. Part of why I came around to feminism though was because I found Shameless feminism so accessible and easy to relate to my life).
When I learned how much, until recently feminism was "for" white women, I was shocked. Like when I read Feminism is for Everybody, by bell hooks, and when I learned that when women got the vote in the 1920s in North America, it was actually just WHITE women who got to vote.
These days, I'm with OBW in aligning myself with feminism in an attempt to reclaim it (Queering feminism?) - I sort of feel like, why shouldn't it be for us women of colour too, dammit?
Posted by thea
August 20, 2007, 1:15 PM
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