A recent survey said a large amount of millennial women do not identify as feminist, but a few De Anza College students and faculty say that feminism is a necessary movement for equality and identify as feminist.
The survey was done prior to the midterm elections in 2018 by Refinery29 and CBS News, and showed that close to half of the 2,093 women surveyed did not identify themselves as feminist.
For some at De Anza, feminism is still an important movement in gaining equality between genders.
“Feminism is equality between gender, it’s not just about girls,” said Alicia Varghese, 24, business major.
Varghese explained, that despite being busy and not staying as informed as she would like, she believes that feminism and equality is a relevant movement.
Although a large number of the survey respondents did not identify as feminist, 53 percent of them indicated that they thought the Trump administration is hurting women’s rights.
“Right now, there are more democratic views and women in office,” said Jasmine Younis, 20, animation major, who explained that there is help coming in the midst of the current administration.
Some of the fluctuation in popularity for some of the polled women comes from an idea that feminism can be seen as “men-hating.” For the De Anza respondents, they viewed feminists as desiring equality for everyone, not being against men.
“At its true core it is not,” said Hannah Eagle, 23, undecided. “But people do pervert it.”
Respondents did say that those being aggressive for their point of view, and even coming across as against men, turns them away from being a part of the movement. De Anza participants agreed that there is bad perceptions out there.
Faculty member Teresa Dey, animation instructor, explained that there is bad perceptions of feminism out there as it has become politicized, and that “the movement needs to be re-branded.”
For some women, they responded suggesting that feminism is not truly necessary and that they find women to be equal and in no need of further advances like the country needed in the past. The five students and faculty at De Anza gave the opposite opinion, that feminism is necessary even today.
“We definitely need feminism because there are still cases where women don’t have the same rights as men,” Eagle said.
For Varghese, she explained how she still sees the need for feminism in the wage gap between men and women, and that she has seen prejudice towards women in certain fields being seen as “too emotional.”
The millennial women who responded to the original survey described reasons why they choose not to be feminist, whether it is attitudes in the group, political leanings, or finding no necessity in the movement. For the five respondents who were questioned informally at De Anza, the movement is important.
Eric Stryker, 49, film major, who is the opposite of a millennial woman, explained that he even finds himself identifying as feminist because he has seen that equality has not been achieved yet.
Stryker does agree that the feminist movement should not exist, because “we already should just be equal. Why are we not already doing it?”
