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Joanne Baker
James Cook University

'Generational Feminisms and the Conservative Scapegoating of Girls and Young Women'

Any consideration of generational feminisms must critically examine the role of neoliberal ideology in the way in which younger women engage with feminist philosophies. There has been limited examination of the social context of younger women's relationship to feminisms, revealing a preference for constructing the debate in familial (mother-daughter) terms or for exploiting the spectacle of disagreement amongst feminists of all ages and giving weight to claims of the existence of a 'post-feminist' era.

I will argue that the emancipatory potential of structural feminisms has been expropriated and commodified to serve conservative agendas and commercial interests. Of particular note is the privileging of decontextualised individual narratives that emphasise self-determination and the elevation of personal choice over considerations of collective good. Such politics of individualism manifestly support a liberal market ideology of competition and consumerism.

These are conditions that silence rather than facilitate the expression of radical politics, conditions more suited to the celebratory girl power hype that is associated with younger women. The idea of an active and powerful femininity (such as mainly white, middle class young women out-performing boys at school) coexists with the rhetoric of recuperative masculinity politics that positions boys and men as the 'new disadvantaged'. My assertion is that under contradictory and challenging social and political conditions, girls and young women are the primary scapegoats of conservatism and backlash. I conclude by contesting the value, and emphasising the danger, of reclaiming patriarchal constructs of femininity and sexual power in a feminist cause.

Bio: Joanne Baker is currently a PhD student in Women's Studies and Social Policy within the School of Social Work and Community Welfare at James Cook University in Townsville. She is also employed at the North Queensland Domestic Violence Resource Service, having been a worker and activist in women's services in the UK, Australia and Canada since 1990.

<Joanne.Baker@jcu.edu.au>