Feminist cohorts and waves: Attitudes of junior female academics

Abstract

Synopsis A growing literature works from a presumption of conflict and tension between feminist generations or what has been conceptualized in the literature as “waves.” While some of our own experiences as new academics revealed similar anxieties about generational differences among our own feminist colleagues, we also observed that each of us—theoretically belonging to the same feminist “generation” — defined our feminist identities and practices quite differently. This paper assesses whether there is an explicitly identifiable junior cohort associated with particular views about feminism and women studies finding that, while this cohort have adopted many of the views of the “third wave” they have not rejected earlier waves or ideologies. We argue that cohortism and generational schisms described in the literature may not reflect the reality for academic women and that these claims are actually entrenching a narrative of feminism that fails to capture the multiplicity of academic women’s identities. We address the implications for women and/or gender studies programs who must account for the ideological proclivities of the incoming cohort of academic women while not relying on the narratives in the literature to define them. “To me the most pressing task for the feminists of our time, both inside and outside academe, is this cross-generational moment: a passage of legacy, wisdom, memory and yet unanswered questions and unresolved conflict belonging to political and intellectual struggles that are much larger than life and much too important to leave behind without dialog across the generations ( Zita, 1997:1 ).”