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Postfeminism (alternatively rendered as post-feminism) is an alleged decrease in popular support for feminism from the 1990s onwards. (2025). 9781134382453, Routledge. ISBN 9781134382453 (2025). 9781461636564, Rowman & Littlefield. ISBN 9781461636564 It can be considered a critical way of understanding the changed relations between feminism, femininity and popular culture. The term is sometimes confused with subsequent feminisms such as fourth-wave feminism, postmodern feminism,Yang Feng (2025). 9786058625426, Renmin Press Beijing, People's Publishing House, PRC. ISBN 9786058625426 and xenofeminism.
Research conducted at Kent State University in the 2000s narrowed postfeminism to four main claims: support for feminism declined; women began hating feminism and feminists; society had already attained social equality, thus making feminism outdated; and the label "feminist" has a negative stigma.
In the 1990s the term became popular in academia and the media and was used in both complimentary and dismissive ways. Since then there has been confusion surrounding the intended meaning of "post" in the context of "postfeminism". "Post" offers to situate feminism in history by proclaiming the end of this history. It then confirms feminist history as a thing of the past. However, some claim that it is impossible that feminism could be aligned with "post" when it is unthinkable, as it would be the same as calling the current world a post racist, post-classist, and post-sexist society.
Contemporarily the term postfeminist is still used to refer to young women "who are thought to benefit from the women's movement through expanded access to employment and education and new family arrangements but at the same time do not push for further political change", Pamela Aronson, Professor of Sociology, asserts.
In Lacan and Postfeminism (2000), author Elizabeth Wright identified a "positive reading" of postfeminism that, instead of indicating an overcoming of feminism, refers to post-structuralist critiques of second-wave feminism.Wright, Elizabeth, Lacan and Postfeminism (Icon Books, 2000), From a similar perspective, Diane Davis affirmed that postfeminism is just a continuation of what first and second wave feminisms want.Davis, Debra Diane, Breaking Up at Totality: A Rhetoric of Laughter (Carbondale: Southern Ill. Univ. Press, 2000 ()), p. 141 n. 8 (brackets in title so in original) (author asst. prof. rhetoric, Univ. of Iowa).
In Feminism: A Beginner’s Guide (2010), Sally Scholz referred to the fourth wave as postfeminism.
Some contemporary feminists, such as Katha Pollitt or Nadine Strossen, consider feminism to hold simply that "women are people." Views that separate the sexes rather than unite them are considered by these writers to be sexist rather than feminist.Pollitt, Katha, Reasonable Creatures: Essays on Women and Feminism (Vintage, 1995) Strossen, Nadine, Defending Pornography: Free Speech, Sex, and the Fight for Women's Rights (Prentice Hall & IBD, 1995),
Postfeminist literature—also known as chick lit—has been criticized by feminists for similar themes and notions. However, the genre is also praised for being confident, witty, and complicated, bringing in feminist themes, revolving around women, and reinventing standards of fiction. Examples can also be found in Pretty Little Liars. The novels explore the complexity of girlhood in a society that assumes gender equality, which is in line with postfeminism. The constant surveillance and self policing of the series' protagonists depicts the performance of heterosexuality, hyperfemininity, and critical gaze forced upon girls. The materialism and performance from the girls in Pretty Little Liars critiques the notion that society has full gender equality, and thus offers a critique of postfeminism.
Similarly, Amelia Jones claims that the postfeminist texts which emerged in the 1980s and 1990s portrayed second-wave feminism as a monolithic entity and were overly generalizing in their criticism.Jones, Amelia. "Postfeminism, Feminist Pleasures, and Embodied Theories of Art," New Feminist Criticism: Art, Identity, Action, Eds. Joana Frueh, Cassandra L. Langer and Arlene Raven. New York: HarperCollins, 1994. 16–41, 20.
Angela McRobbie suggests that adding the prefix post- to feminism undermined the strides that feminism made in achieving equality for everyone, including women. In McRobbie's opinion, postfeminism gave the impression that equality has been achieved and feminists could now focus on something else entirely. She believed that postfeminism was most clearly seen on so-called feminist media products, such as Bridget Jones's Diary, Sex and the City, and Ally McBeal. Female characters like Bridget Jones and Carrie Bradshaw claimed to be liberated and clearly enjoy their sexuality, but what they were constantly searching for was the one man who would make everything worthwhile.
In an article on print jewelry advertisements in Singapore, Michelle Lazar analyses how the construction of 'postfeminist' femininity has given rise to a neoliberal hybrid "pronounced sense of self or 'I-dentity'". She states that the increasing number of female wage earners has led to advertisers updating their image of women but that "through this hybrid postfeminist I-dentity, advertisers have found a way to reinstall a new normativity that coexists with the status quo". Postfeminist ads and fashion have been criticized for using femininity as a commodity veiled as liberation.
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