Melissa Kite Melissa Kite

Forty is a feminist issue

Emily Hill declared in The Spectator that the movement’s big battles are all won. Not for older women they’re not

issue 31 October 2015

If Emily Hill is right in her cover piece for the magazine last week headlined ‘The end of feminism’, then women like me are in a whole world of trouble. And by women like me, I mean women over 40.

The nub of Ms Hill’s argument was that all the big battles are won. She quoted the sparkling achievements of ‘women in their twenties’ and also ‘the under-40s’, who are out-earning men. What happens to women after they have broken through the glass ceiling is a question for an older, more cynical female writer. At your service.

While agreeing with a lot of what Ms Hill says about the pettiness of today’s Twitter feminism, it is important to draw attention to the paragraph in which she reveals her birth year (1983) and to note that articles declaring feminism void are usually written by women in their thirties or younger. ‘Give her ten years,’ I found myself thinking wistfully.

Looking back on my twenties and thirties, I believed equality to be like water, flowing freely and without end.

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