The end of feminism? There are more of us than you think

The best of Voices delivered to your inbox every week - from controversial columns to expert analysis Sign up for our free weekly Voices newsletter for expert opinion and columns Sign up to our free weekly Voices newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. To dismiss feminism as ‘dead’ on the basis that one woman in seven constitutes an embarrassingly low turnout is interesting in itself, given that those figures would give it a nationwide ‘membership’ numbering just under four and a half million…more than ten times the membership of the Conservative, Labour and Liberal Democrat parties combined. Whilst I’m sure there are plenty of young feminist mums out there, it’s probably fair to say that if you wanted a representative sample of how many young women aged 20-24 would describe themselves as feminists, surveying only those who are members of a parenting website probably wasn’t the most unbiased way to get it. They’re the 48 male and female welfare officers at Cambridge University who wrote, brilliantly, to the student paper to denounce an article claiming women should avoid the ‘risk’ of being raped. Every little girl who doesn’t know why she gets the toy cleaning set or the cooker when the ray gun and the baseball bat look so much cooler.