Critical Perspectives on Postfeminist Discourses

Abstract

Postfeminist discourses emerging in the political economic sphere in the early twenty-first century frame gender equality as nonthreatening to the status quo. Such discourses appeal to the next generation of young people by making requirements for enhancing gender equality seem simple, practical, and typically noncombative. In the political domain, the United Nations He-For-She initiative (UN Women 2016) asks people to take basic individual actions to promote and express personal commitment to gender equality around the world, for the benefit of both men and women. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (2013) encourages women to succeed more equally with men in workplaces, by literally and figuratively leaning forward, at the meeting table and within the larger workplace community. Such perspectives have provided fertile ground in the new feminist or postfeminist landscape, gaining much international attention and reverberating in discourses of the nonprofit sector and other spheres, particularly education. However critical perspectives have accompanied this rise in new or post-feminism. Critics contend such discourses offer a deficiency model of gender equality that partly blames women by focusing on their internal change. They also observe in the new landscape tendencies of gender binary essentialism and universalization of women’s experiences. Such critical views promote attention to structural and postcolonial contributions to discussions of equity and gender in diverse educational contexts.