What is the Point of Feminism?

Last week’s Tab article shows feminism is alive and kicking but what are today’s feminists trying to achieve?

In a country where girls outperform boys at every level of education from GCSEs where the gender grade gap is widening to degrees where 66% of women achieve a 2:1 or higher and 57% of graduates are female, it’s difficult to make the case that the education system doesn’t favour women.

Mary Curnock Cook of UCAS recently voiced concern over the stats, saying

Young women are now a third more likely to enter higher education than men, a difference that has increased this cycle. The fact that women remain more likely to enter higher education than men are to apply, is a striking and worrying finding.”

Feminists often quote the concept of a gender pay gap but this myth has been exposed by a number of studies showing that here in the UK the difference in pay is negligible or even reversed up until the age where many women opt to take a break from their careers to raise children. This clearly isn’t discrimination.

Of course, there’s more to life than education and work, but the news for young men continues to be bad. The fact is, men under 35 are a massive four times more likely to commit suicide than women, in fact suicide is now the number one cause of death for young men, the rate being even higher than deaths from traffic accidents. Young men are also overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of violence and increasing numbers of studies are showing women are more likely to be the perpetrators of domestic violence than their male partners but despite these shocking statistics, provision for men is woefully inadequate.

Less than 0.4% of refuge places for victims of domestic violence are for men, charities set up to help male mental health are subject to mockery, even our union SUSU celebrates International Women’s Day but considers the male equivalent to be as unneccesary as a “white history month.” I’m all for equality, but this just isn’t it.

Today’s feminists must be having to hunt pretty hard for anything at all to complain about. A quick search around the internet provides ample evidence that in the absense of supporting statistics, feminists revert to in-fighting and troll baiting.

In continuing to drone on about “patriachy” and ignoring the fact that true discrimination is fortunately rare in our modern lives, feminists do themselves a disservice. It’s time to recognise the success of the equality movement and focus on the real day to day problems people of either gender can suffer, as feminism itself becomes an anachronism.