"Betty Friedan to Beyoncé: Today’s generation embraces feminism on its own terms"

"Young women (and, increasingly, men) are still coming to the movement in strong numbers, but this feminism looks different, in many ways, than that of earlier generations. This New Wave feminism is shaped less by a shared struggle against oppression than by a collective embrace of individual freedoms, concerned less with targeting narrowly defined enemies than with broadening feminism’s reach through inclusiveness, and held together not by a handful of national organizations and charismatic leaders but by the invisible bonds of the Internet and social media.

This  feminism stresses personal freedom as much as it does equality and, when infused with the younger generation’s bent toward inclusion, has the capacity to make room for both Carly Fiorina and Beyoncé — even though older generations might permit neither...

Far from the largely monolithic feminism that came of age amid the upheaval of the 1960s and ’70s, it is splintered and amorphous. It fits varied interests and groups under one massive umbrella. Where women of the Second Wave found their entrée into feminism in a rousing speech, a book, a march, a copy of Ms. Magazine or a women’s group, now young women are frequently introduced to it through a Beyoncé video, a season of HBO’s “Girls” or a website such as Jezebel — all of them occupying wildly different plots on the vast, untamed feminist landscape...

it increasingly is taking place not in a political space but a cultural one, a sphere dominated by powerful young women — Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, Jennifer Lawrence and others — who identify publicly as feminists. This version of feminism is, by definition, more inclusive than the versions that came before."

https://www.washingtonpost.com/national/feminism/betty-friedan-to-beyonce-todays-generation-embraces-feminism-on-its-own-terms/2016/01/27/ab480e74-8e19-11e5-ae1f-af46b7df8483_story.html