Maybe I’m a Feminist After All

I was at a family gathering recently when the conversation turned to feminism. It covered the usual territory: men and women are different, men do physically demanding jobs like construction work, women take maternity leave, women menstruate, and therefore women and men cannot really be equal.

Then came the complaints about divorce. Someones friends had been divorced and ordered to pay substantial alimony, which was framed as another example of women becoming "too bold." There was also an objection to parents telling their daughters, "If anything goes wrong, come home," on the grounds that it gives women an easy exit from marriage.

I was furious listening to all of this and I was surprised by was how much it bothered me, because I have never been particularly passionate about calling myself a feminist.

I have always thought my position was fairly simple, people should be free to live the lives they want, pursue the careers they want and make their own choices without gender deciding what those choices should look like. As long as you aren't harming another person, why should it matter whether you are a man or a woman?

Maybe that is feminism.

Men and women are different. So what?

Of course men and women are different. We have different bodies, different reproductive systems and, on average, differences in physical strength. But equality has never required pretending otherwise. Gender equality is about equal rights, responsibilities and opportunities. It does not require women and men to be identical, just that their rights and opportunities shouldn't depend on whether they were born male or female. [1]

So when someone says, "But men do the physically demanding jobs," I struggle to understand the argument. If a job requires a certain physical ability, hire the person who can do it. That doesn't tell us who should lead a company, who should earn more, who should cook dinner, who should raise children or whose ambitions should take priority.

Biological difference is a fact. It doesn't tell us who deserves an opportunity.

The five days

The argument about menstruation particularly bothered me. Women are apparently "unproductive" for five days a month. I mean do they really think all women experience menstruation the same way?

Menstruation is a natural biological process, but people experience it differently. The World Health Organization says menstrual experiences can range from uncomplicated to painful or otherwise disruptive. More than two-thirds of women and girls experience menstrual pain, though for most people the symptoms don't prevent them from carrying on with daily life. For some, however, pain can be severe enough to significantly affect their wellbeing and ability to function. [2]

So why should having a period be evidence against equality? If someone experiences severe menstrual pain and needs a day or two off work, that's a health issue, not proof that every woman is "unproductive" for five days every month. People have migraines, they get sick, have injuries, family emergencies and bad days. We don't use any of that to argue an entire gender is less capable of working.

So why are we suddenly doing the maths when the body in question is female?

The maternity leave problem

Then there is maternity leave. It is true that having an employee take several months away from work can create a practical challenge for a team. But why is the solution apparently that women should be regarded as less reliable employees? The International Labour Organization estimates that in 2023, 708 million women worldwide were outside the labour force because of unpaid care responsibilities, compared with 40 million men. It has also found that mothers receive an average of 24.7 weeks of paid parental leave globally, compared with just 2.2 weeks for fathers. [3]

Those numbers tell me something very different from "women take too much time off." They tell me we've built a system in which women are still expected to carry much more of the responsibility for children and care, long after the parts of parenting that actually require a woman's body are over. Even the argument that a mother has to be the one home because she's breastfeeding doesn't really hold up anymore; pumps exist, and plenty of fathers feed a baby from a bottle at 3am. What's keeping women out of the workforce isn't biology at that point, it's expectation.

If men and women took comparable amounts of parental leave, having a baby would be less of a uniquely female career penalty, and maybe we'd stop treating children as something women alone are expected to absorb into their careers.

What about the divorces?

I don't know the friends being referenced. Perhaps some of them were treated unfairly in their divorces, men can absolutely be victims of unfair financial settlements and difficult marriages. But a handful of bad experiences don't tell us women have become "too bold." If one of my friends was cheated on by a man, I wouldn't conclude that men are inherently unfaithful. If another friend had a terrible divorce, I wouldn't conclude that men are dangerous. We would call it what it was, a bad experience with an individual person.

So why does a man's bad experience with a woman become evidence about women as a group?

Then there is the idea that telling your daughter, "If anything goes wrong, come home," is somehow ruining marriage. I find this one particularly difficult to understand. What exactly are we asking parents to say instead? If your marriage becomes abusive, stay. If your husband hurts you, endure it. If you are miserable, think about what the neighbours will say.

For generations, women were taught that marriage was something they had to survive. Telling your daughter she has somewhere to go if things go badly is a fairly basic expression of love. It doesn't tell her to leave. It tells her that she doesn't have to be trapped.

I became interested in feminism at work

The irony is that I didn't become interested in feminism by reading feminist theory. I went to work and somewhere along the way, I started noticing things I hadn't noticed before.

A man who speaks firmly can be decisive while a woman doing the same thing can be difficult. A man with children is often seen as committed to his family while a woman with children can be asked how she plans to balance them with her career.

These things aren't always obvious. Nobody walks into a meeting and announces that women will be held to a different standard today. They happen in small, cumulative ways: who gets interrupted, who is expected to organise the birthday card or remember the school holiday, who is assumed to be the primary caregiver.

And the numbers suggest these aren't simply individual experiences. The World Bank's 2026 Women, Business and the Law report found that women worldwide have only about two-thirds of the legal economic rights of men. It also found that laws supporting women's economic participation are estimated to be only about half-enforced globally, while fewer than half of the policies and institutions needed to make those laws effective are actually in place. [4]

So when I hear that women are becoming "too bold," I wonder: too bold compared with what? Compared with the women who came before us? Maybe that's exactly the point.

I don't want women to become men. I don't want anyone to have to justify their worth by behaving like someone else. I want a woman to be able to work in construction if she can do the job. I want a man to stay home with his children if that's what works for his family. I want women to be ambitious without apologising for it, and men to choose care without having their masculinity questioned.

I spent a long time thinking I was simply someone who believed people should be free to make their own choices, regardless of gender. Turns out that was feminism all along.

References

1. United Nations. Gender Equality: Concepts and Definitions. UN Womenwatch / UN System Coordination Division for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women. un.org
2. World Health Organization. Menstrual Health. 18 June 2026. who.int
3. International Labour Organization. Closing the gender gap in paid parental leaves: Better parental leaves for a more caring world of work. 24 June 2025. ilo.org
4. World Bank. Women, Business and the Law 2026: Benchmarking Laws for Jobs and Inclusive Growth. 2026. wbl.worldbank.org