Feminism Today: Where Do We Really Stand?

Nathalie, 41, a senior manager at a FTSE 100 company, told me this story during our last interview. Strategy meeting, ten people around the table. She makes a suggestion. Polite silence. Five minutes later, her male colleague rephrases the exact same idea. "Brilliant, Seb!" It's called hepeating — when a man repeats what a woman just said and gets the credit. Nathalie isn't an activist. She doesn't even call herself a feminist. But she lives, daily, what decades of struggle haven't yet managed to eradicate.

This piece is neither a pamphlet nor a balance sheet. It's a stocktake — factual, nuanced, sometimes uncomfortable — of what feminism has won, what it's losing, and the battles still to be fought. With numbers, because numbers don't lie (even if they can be made to say many things). And with questions, because today's feminism is crossed by internal debates we'd be wrong to ignore.

Undeniable gains: what feminism has changed

Before discussing what isn't working, it's essential — and fair — to measure how far we've come. In a century, women's rights in Britain have seen advances our great-grandmothers couldn't have imagined.

Key dates that changed everything

• 1918 — Women over 30 who met property qualifications gain the vote (Representation of the People Act)
• 1928 — Equal voting rights for women at 21 (Equal Franchise Act)
• 1961 — The contraceptive pill becomes available on the NHS
• 1967 — Abortion legalised under certain conditions (Abortion Act)
• 1970 — Equal Pay Act — groundbreaking, but enforcement has been painfully slow
• 1975 — Sex Discrimination Act makes it illegal to discriminate on grounds of sex in employment, education and services
• 1991 — Rape within marriage recognised as a criminal offence. Yes, 1991
• 2010 — Equality Act consolidates and strengthens anti-discrimination legislation
• 2017-2018 — #MeToo: an unprecedented liberation of testimony

These dates are not merely historical milestones. Each was fought for — against fierce resistance, insults, threats. The Suffragettes were imprisoned and force-fed. #MeToo survivors were dragged through the courts. None of these rights fell from the sky. None.

The reality in numbers: where it still stalls

The figures that follow come from the latest ONS data, the Fawcett Society and UN Women. They are verifiable. And they are eloquent.

Pay gaps

14.3% — that's the median gender pay gap in the UK for full-time employees (ONS, 2024). This gap has barely shifted in a decade. The "unexplained" portion — the part not accounted for by sector, seniority or working hours — sits at around 5-8%. In plain terms: for equal work, a woman earns 5 to 8% less than a man, with no identifiable reason beyond her gender.

Translated into pounds: over a complete 40-year career at the median salary, this difference amounts to roughly £130,000 to £180,000 in lost earnings. That's not an abstract figure. It's a house deposit. It's a pension. It's freedom denied.

Political representation

• 35% of MPs are women (2024) — a record high, but still a long way from parity
• 28% of the Cabinet are women
• 17% of council leaders are women
• 3 women have served as Prime Minister in UK history — out of 57 PMs total

Domestic burden

According to the ONS, women in the UK spend on average 26 hours per week on unpaid domestic work and childcare, compared to 16 hours for men. This gap has barely narrowed in 20 years. At the current rate of change, domestic equality won't be reached until well into the next century. That's not a joke. It's a statistical projection.

Violence against women: the permanent emergency

Violence against women remains the most urgent, most documented and most inadequately addressed issue in contemporary feminism.

The UK figures

• 1.7 million women experienced domestic abuse in the year ending March 2024 (ONS Crime Survey)
• 798,000 women experienced sexual assault in the same period
• Fewer than 15% of rape victims report to the police
• Of those reported, the charge rate is approximately 1.6%
• One woman is killed by a partner or ex-partner every four days in England and Wales. The Femicide Census keeps count, woman by woman, name by name

These figures are not distant statistics. Behind every number is a woman — with a name, a story, devastated loved ones. The fact that we need to repeat this, year after year, is in itself an indictment of collective failure.

What's changed since #MeToo

The #MeToo movement, launched in October 2017, caused a cultural earthquake whose aftershocks are still being felt. What has changed:

• Speaking out has been normalised. Reports of sexual violence to police increased by over 20% between 2017 and 2022. Not because there's more violence, but because victims are more willing to come forward
• The law has evolved. The Domestic Abuse Act 2021 created a statutory definition of domestic abuse, recognised controlling and coercive behaviour, and strengthened protections for victims
• Workplaces have shifted. Slowly, insufficiently, but they've shifted. The Worker Protection Act 2023 introduced a positive duty on employers to prevent sexual harassment

What hasn't changed: the criminal justice response to sexual violence remains catastrophic. The rape charge rate in England and Wales hovers around 1.6%. Average wait times from report to trial exceed two years. And victims' testimony is still routinely questioned — "Why didn't you scream? What were you wearing? Had you been drinking?"

Feminism at work: is the glass ceiling cracking?

The workplace is the terrain where gender inequality is both most measurable and most resistant to change. Some factual observations.

The glass ceiling

In the UK, women make up 47% of the workforce but hold only 22% of FTSE 100 board seats designated as executive roles. The Hampton-Alexander Review target of 33% women on FTSE 350 boards has been met — but executive pipeline representation (the people actually running companies day to day) remains stubbornly low.

Part-time work

74% of part-time workers in the UK are women. And this part-time work isn't always "chosen" — many women work part-time because affordable childcare doesn't exist or because employers won't offer flexible full-time arrangements. Part-time work is a trap: it reduces immediate earnings but also pension contributions, promotion prospects and financial independence. It's one of the most underestimated structural causes of poverty among older women.

"Women's work"

The lowest-paid occupations are also the most feminised: care workers, teaching assistants, cleaners, retail staff. This isn't coincidence. Research consistently shows that as a profession feminises, its pay and prestige decline. The reverse is equally documented: when a profession masculinises (computing in the 1980s), its pay increases.

The mental load: the invisible battle

In 2017, French cartoonist Emma published a comic strip called You Should've Asked that went viral worldwide, crystallising the concept of the "mental load" in public debate. The term had existed before — sociologist Monique Haicault theorised it in 1984 — but the comic made it visible, concrete, immediately recognisable for millions of women.

The mental load is the invisible work of planning, anticipating and managing daily life that falls overwhelmingly to women: remembering the children's doctors' appointments, checking there's milk, planning the week's meals, remembering the mother-in-law's birthday, buying winter shoes before it gets cold. It's not doing the tasks. It's thinking about the tasks — and it's exhausting precisely because it's invisible and permanent.

Why it persists

The mental load doesn't persist because men are lazy or malicious. It persists because gender norms are deeply internalised — by women as much as by men. Many women can't "delegate" without monitoring the result, because they've been socialised to be the guarantors of domestic functioning. Many men don't "see" what needs doing, because they've never been taught to see it.

The solution isn't individual — it's structural. Longer, better-paid paternity leave (the UK currently offers two weeks' statutory paternity pay at £172.48/week — compare that to the Nordic model of months of well-paid shared parental leave), education about equal domestic responsibility from primary school, and a collective rethinking of assigned roles.

Intersectionality: feminism for everyone

The term "intersectionality" was coined in 1989 by American legal scholar Kimberlé Crenshaw to describe a reality that women of colour had always lived: discriminations don't add up — they multiply. A Black woman doesn't experience racism plus sexism — she experiences a specific form of discrimination at the intersection of both.

Why it matters

"Universal" feminism — the kind that speaks for all women based on the experience of white, urban, educated women — has blind spots. Women of colour, disabled women, trans women, rural women, women in poverty don't live the same realities. A feminism that doesn't account for these differences risks reproducing, within itself, the very hierarchies it claims to fight.

Some concrete examples:

• Women of colour in the UK face a double pay penalty — penalised by both gender and ethnicity. Bangladeshi and Pakistani women earn 26% less than white British men
• Disabled women are twice as likely to experience domestic abuse as non-disabled women
• Trans women face disproportionate rates of violence and discrimination, including within feminist movements
• Single mothers — 90% of single parents in the UK — represent one of the populations most exposed to poverty

The tensions

Intersectionality generates significant debate within British feminism. Some feminists argue it fragments the movement, diluting the fight for sex-based equality into a constellation of identity-based causes. Others respond that refusing intersectionality means invisibilising the most vulnerable women in the name of a universality that in practice benefits only the most privileged.

This debate deserves to be taken seriously — on both sides. Caricatured positions ("intersectionality is identity politics gone mad" vs "gender-critical feminism is transphobic") help nobody. The question is complex, and it deserves better than slogans.

Internal debates that divide the movement

Feminism is not a monolith — and that's also its strength. Here are the major debates running through it today.

Sex work: abolition or regulation?

The divide runs deep. Abolitionist feminism views prostitution as inherent violence, a system of exploitation to be combated by criminalising buyers (the Nordic model). Pro-rights feminism argues that criminalisation endangers sex workers, increases health risks, and that the priority should be protecting and empowering the people involved.

The gender identity debate

One of the most polarising debates in UK feminism. "Gender-critical" feminists argue that sex-based rights must be protected and that self-identification policies could undermine women-only spaces. Trans-inclusive feminists counter that trans women are women and that excluding them from feminism is itself a form of discrimination. This debate has become deeply entrenched in British public life and shows no sign of easy resolution.

Safe spaces and non-mixed organising

Women-only spaces — meetings, organisations, support groups — are a longstanding feminist tool. They are challenged by some as discriminatory, but defended by others as necessary spaces for free expression, where the presence of men can inhibit or alter discussion. The debate extends to racially non-mixed spaces — and the tensions are sharper still.

Taking action: beyond the hashtags

Posting a purple square on Instagram on International Women's Day is a symbolic gesture — not activism. Here are concrete, measurable actions that actually make a difference.

At the individual level

• Negotiate your salary. Women negotiate less than men — not from lack of ambition but from socialisation (women who negotiate "aggressively" are perceived negatively, while men aren't). Negotiating is a feminist act. Prepare your arguments, document your value, ask
• Share domestic tasks equitably. If you live with a partner, do an audit. Who does what? Who thinks about what? Simply making the division visible often changes the dynamic
• Raise children differently. Don't gender toys, activities or ambitions. Let boys cry. Encourage girls to negotiate. It sounds small — it isn't

At the collective level

• Support charities. Women's Aid, Refuge, Rape Crisis, the Fawcett Society — all need donations, volunteers and amplification. £10 a month funds a call to a helpline
• Vote consciously. Look at candidates' records on equality. Check how MPs voted on legislation affecting women's rights. The information is public — you just have to look
• Support women in your workplace. Recommend a female colleague for a role. Call out inappropriate behaviour. Correct hepeating in meetings ("As Sarah just suggested…"). These are micro-actions that, accumulated, shift dynamics