Women are rejecting feminism because they can still go out to work, have independence from men, equal pay, sex whenever they want, go to pubs whenever they want, in fact do whatever they want whenever they want and still have the door opened for them and have dinner and flowers bought for them. There's no longer any need to "be a feminist"

Thanks for that, Paul -- an interesting and somewhat reassuring read. I first came across the 'younger generation is getting more conservative' discourse as a young postgrad about 15 years ago, when the older women on my masters course constantly assured me that my generation was rapidly becoming less radical because we weren't out 'womynning the barricades' and so forth (apparently). My generation were definitely seen as lesser mortals!

My facetious, knee jerk answer to your closing question would be that the second wave, babyboomer feminist generation didn't want to give up their public ownership of the issue (i.e. a gen-x vs babyboomers, 'ganglands' style thesis). More thoughtfully, perhaps they didn't realise that the goalposts had shifted in some ways for a younger generation of women, and that debates about the same existential issues (work, families, etc) were merely being interpolated in different ways.

I also wonder if conservative politicians have tried to re-cast public debate on 'what women want' in certain, less than progressive ways to support their own public/social policy engineering efforts (e.g. the current baby bonus stuff & use of Carolyn Hakim's work to support their take on the family & work issue). A parallel might be the conservatives' stated appeal to the wants and needs of the aspirational, lower middle class voter when many of their policies (e.g. tax cuts for the rich, a two-tiered health system) surely work against the interests of this lower income group. Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that the gap between the perceptions of young women's opinions and their actual opinions may have been quite purposefully engineered in public policy & media debate.

Lisamarie -- don't forget the efforts of the women who made these things possible for you!

I can imagine a school class being held on feminism, family and social issues.

Now students,
If a woman becomes pregnant, up to 40% of the time she will have the foetus killed.
If the woman continues with the pregnancy, 1 in 10 children will be effected by the drugs the mother takes during the pregnancy.
If the children are born, 1 in 3 will be removed from their father by the age of 18, due to divorce or separation which is mainly initiated by the mother.
Of those children removed from their father, 1 in 3 will never see their father in the future.
Over 50% of custodial mothers believe that the contact time the non-custodial father has with his children is “just right”, when the majority of these fathers see their children every second weekend or less, (or not at all).
The majority of child abuse and child poverty occurs in single female parent families, often creating a cycle of abuse and welfare dependency.

So children, you should feel very grateful for feminism and modern motherhood, except perhaps if you are a foetus or dependant child, (in which case you have a lot to worry about).

I will finish with an excerpt from a book titled “What Women Want Next”, by the honest and famous Australian feminist, Dr Susan Maushart.

"When I was a teenager, I thought love would solve everything. In my early 20s, I thought sex would solve everything. By my late 20s, I thought a career would solve everything and then - when it didn't - I was sure that motherhood would. By my late 30s, following a brief period of certainty that therapy would solve everything, I became convinced that divorce would solve everything. At 40, I was sure an extension would solve everything (and, frankly, the en suite came close). Now, edging 50, imagine my surprise to find that I am as f---ed up as ever."

So class, you should all aspire to become a brilliant feminist like Dr Susan Maushart. We should invite her to the school to give a talk

An interesting response, Eleanor, especially your conjectural answer to the final two questions.

As a matter of historical interest, in Australia the 2nd wave feminists of c. 1970 had their own generational argument about issue priorities, ways of organising, etc., with the preceding generation of the "movement among women", as it called itself, in groups like the Union of Australian Women.

Timkins, I luv this "up to" 40%. That's not a statistic, it's an emotional wishywashy number that doesn't really say anything. Did you know that 100% of divorces begin in marriage?
Yes Children. Let's go back 50+ years where 50% of babies born were doomed to be considered inferior simply because of gender.
Thanks Meredith, I don't forget. What I meant was that that the difference between perception and reality could be the interpretation of "feminism". I think most women in their 20's prolly don't know or understand the meaning. Some people still think it's about who pays for dinner, or who asks who out on the first date.

Lisamaree,
I’m not sure of your objection to statistics. At a quick count, there were 28 sets of statistics incorporated into the article, but I feel that many of those statistics were questionable, as they came from public opinion polls which can be easily manipulated by choice of wording in the poll questions, and they also rely upon the public having a very good understanding of the subject matter.

Statistics are also regularly used within organisations such as the AIFS, universities, medicine etc.

There is quite a good account of feminism in the article “Feminism and the Family” at http://www.ldsmag.com/familywatch/040506feminism.html. That article gives the history of modern feminism, a biography of many of the feminist leaders (including our own Germaine Greer), and the eventual outcomes of feminist ideology for many families. Unfortunately it is not for the feint of heart or stomach.

However I think that feminism has also become highly commercialised, and is now used to exploit both men and women, and it is also highly anti-child.

You may get a general idea of this by reading the many articles written by Dr Susan Maushart (with her PhD in Communication Theory), which are published each week in the Australian Newspaper. She makes money from those articles, but in those articles she repeatedly disparages men, her various ex-husbands, and her own children.

I have heard of no feminist opposition to those articles, and this tells me a lot about feminism in Australia.