With a new wave of feminist writers, campaigners and activists sweeping through mainstream media, 2014 has been dubbed ‘the Year of the Woman’. The title is apt: with campaigns such as the ‘Everyday Sexism Project’ and #PassItOn gaining increasing momentum, it looks as though the gender equality movement is not only alive and kicking, but is showing no signs of slowing down.

Social media means that feminism has never been so high profile and accessible – it only takes 140 characters and two minutes of your time to help raise awareness of the serious inequality and discrimination that women still face today.

Laura Bates and her ‘Everyday Sexism Project’ have become increasingly popular, resulting in the publication of her book of the same title, containing over 50,000 submissions from women all over the world.

Emma Watson delivered a groundbreaking speech to the UN, encouraging both men and women to embrace feminism together. Beyoncé proudly and publicly proclaimed herself a feminist in her performance at the VMAs, whilst her husband and daughter watched on – two things that feminists are not typically seen as being supposed to have.

Malala Yousafzai became the youngest ever winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, aged just 17, due to her work in advocating female education. This is only the surface of the ground-breaking feminism that has influenced women, young and old, worldwide.
Unfortunately, this new wave has been a double-edged sword. Not only has it outlined some of the inherent flaws in the feminist movement, it has also generated a significant backlash, demonstrating just how far we have left to go.

Even the very limited list of feminists above demonstrates the diversity of the women’s rights movement. But with this has come the dangerous concepts of a ‘good feminist’ and a ‘bad feminist’. There seems to be a significant amount of internal criticism within feminism: Laura Bates has been criticised for embracing typical female beauty standards simply due to the way she looks, whilst Emma Watson has been said to be advocating a safe form of feminism, which seeks to avoid male criticism.

This division is both hypocritical and limiting. Not only does this perpetuate the sexist ideal of pitting one woman against another, it also fails to recognise the shared end goal of these campaigners: gender equality. In order for this to be achieved, feminists must work with each other, and give up their inherently dangerous feminist superiority complex.

As the old saying goes: united we stand, divided we fall. Yet perhaps an even bigger issue that the feminist activism of 2014 has demonstrated is the criticism coming from outside the movement: the backlash.

The gender equality campaigns of the past year have generated a significant amount of anger, aggression and hostility. This ranges from the popular hashtag ‘Women Against Feminism’, which took Twitter by storm in August, to the repeated death and rape threats received by female campaigners.

The former involved women from all over the world tweeting messages detailing why they disliked feminism and felt they didn’t need it. Most of the reasons given involved the fact that they had the right to vote, get an education and generally didn’t feel inferior to men in any way (ironically, these women didn’t seem to recognise that all of these are actually feminist achievements).

The most worrying aspect of this campaign is not the fact that these women feel they don’t need feminism. It is the deep seated misunderstanding of the concept that these women seem to harbour which results in such ignorant and damaging statements that desperately needs to be resolved.

This is not, in fact, helped by the concept of feminism as perpetuated by some feminists themselves: the notion that feminism is some sort of elite and exclusive club made up of feminist ‘members’.

This is far from the case – a feminist is anybody who believes in the social, political and economic equality of the sexes. Full stop. There are no criteria for being a feminist other than a belief in this principle. The sooner we get this definition to replace the concept of the ‘Feminazi’, the better. Feminism is for everyone, and it’s time we stopped excluding people from it.

So what can we learn from the success of feminism in 2014? That we as a society have a long way to go – both in our understanding of the concept of feminism, and in the way that we portray it.

If we want to make 2015 even more of a success for feminism than 2014 was, then it’s important that we do two things.

Firstly, ensure that feminism is made accessible to an even wider audience through education and making the movement appear more inclusive. And secondly, stop the constant critiquing of other feminists: any effort to make gender equality a reality should be welcomed.