By focusing on individual enlightenment instead of liberation for all women, liberal feminism inadvertently upholds the status quo.
Liberal feminism seeks to gain equal access and representation for women without questioning the fundamental structures that perpetuate inequality. Its fatal flaw is it focuses on integrating women into existing societal frameworks rather than seeking to transform or dismantle those frameworks.
Liberal feminism posits that women can achieve equality with men by securing equal employment opportunities, education, and personal freedoms.
While these efforts have led to significant strides in promoting gender equality—particularly in of legal rights and access to education—they offer a skewed interpretation of women’s struggles by failing to address deeper systemic inequalities and intersectional issues, particularly those concerning race, class, and global oppression.
Liberal feminists believe if women have the same rights and opportunities as men, gender parity will naturally follow. However, by focusing solely on legal and policy reforms, liberal feminism assumes the current political and economic structures as inherently fair, believing women can achieve equality simply by gaining equal access to these systems.
This perspective ignores how systems themselves are built on structural inequities. Achieving representation or legal rights doesn’t dismantle the underlying capitalist, patriarchal, or colonial frameworks that create and sustain inequality.
Liberal feminism often centres around the experiences of middle- and upper-class white women, leaving out the struggles of women of colour, working-class women, and women in the Global South.
Its focus on individual success within the system reinforces neoliberal values of meritocracy and individualism, further neglecting the collective needs of women across various intersections of identity.
Liberal feminism is also criticized for engaging in “corporate feminism,” celebrating women’s rise in corporate or political power without questioning the exploitative systems in which they operate.
The focus on “leaning in” or “breaking the glass ceiling” for corporate women, as advocated by figures like Sheryl Sandberg, fails to acknowledge the vast majority of women who aren’t in a position to even approach those ceilings. If structures of power are inherently flawed and unequal, then granting women access to those structures doesn’t get closer to tackling the root causes of gender inequality.
Liberal feminism’s emphasis on “choice” also oversimplifies complex issues like reproductive rights and sexual agency. By framing all decisions as equally valid under the banner of individual autonomy, liberal feminism ignores systemic pressures that often influence those choices. For example, while the right to choose whether or not to have children is essential, liberal feminism overlooks the lack of access to healthcare and social services that disproportionately affects marginalized communities, limiting their ability to truly exercise that choice.
For true gender equality to be realized, our feminist movements must go beyond the liberal feminist framework and embrace a more intersectional approach—one that considers the varied and interconnected forms of oppression that affect women differently, based on their race, class, sexuality, and geographic location.
Solutions to gender inequality must be structural, not individual. It’s not enough to ensure that women can “lean in” or break through the glass ceiling if this ceiling is out of reach for majority of women, particularly those from marginalized communities.
Our feminism must advocate for systemic changes, such as dismantling capitalist and colonial structures, providing universal access to healthcare, and ensuring that women of all backgrounds have access to education and employment opportunities that aren’t exploitative.
If we don’t challenge the systems that create inequality, then we aren’t truly fighting for justice, just inclusion in a forever unjust system.
Oluwamisimi D. Oluwole is a third-year Nursing student and one of The Journal’s Business, Science & Technology Editors.
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