A Post-Feminist Gender Order

The formal currency granted to gender equality as an ideal is often popularly assumed, almost as a form of ‘common sense’, to constitute evidence of its actual existence. The general acceptance of women’s rights to equality often obscures the ways in which current discursive and material practices operate to produce differential social outcomes for women and men. This obfuscation is one of the defining features of a social context increasingly characterized as post-feminist in nature. Although there is much debate about what post-feminism signifies and what accepting it as a descriptor of the contemporary social order might imply, its usage has become ubiquitous in current discussions of feminism (Hawkesworth, 2004). The burgeoning literature on post-feminism is indicative of a growing concern with the state of gender relations in late modernity, which in turn has given rise to a strong interest in analysing what is happening to feminism (Genz, 2009; Genz and Brabon, 2009; McRobbie, 2004b; Negra, 2009; Tasker and Negra, 2007). As Gill explains, ‘in recent years debates about everything from the history and exclusions of feminism to the gender consciousness (or otherwise) of young women and the ideological nature of contemporary media, have crystallized in disagreements about postfeminism’ (2007a: 147). The aim of this chapter is to provide a detailed account of post-feminism, which is used in the context of this book to describe the contemporary Western gender order. Outlining the main features of post-feminism aids in situating third wave feminism within this specific set of social conditions and helps to explain how third wave feminism has manifested within a genealogy of feminism.