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Nyadol Nyuon is a lawyer, writer and adviser.
This article was first published in the print edition of The Saturday Paper on March 7, 2026 as "The crisis in feminism".
There is a pattern in history that keeps repeating. It is that every meaningful stride towards equality has always been met with a coordinated backlash and a corresponding retreat into grievance and contempt. The same pattern of backlash is happening to the feminist movement and to its vision to advance gender equality.
The intensity and reach of this backlash is cited to claim that feminism is in crisis. If feminism is in crisis, however, it is because our society is in crisis. The backlash directed at feminism is only illustrative of that deeper and broader societal crisis, which precedes and exceeds it.
That said, a crisis in feminism and equality, affecting as it does half of our population, remains an important measure of the status of our nation’s common health.
One explanation for the backlash against feminism and gender equality is the rise of the so-called manosphere. The manosphere is a predominantly online cultural phenomenon that promotes misogynistic, anti-feminist and anti-gender equality beliefs and mindsets. Its contents have been linked to changes in young men’s attitudes and behaviours towards women and girls. The manosphere is real and causing harm. That is not in dispute. However, focusing on the manosphere as a lens through which to understand the threats to feminism and gender equality, or as an indication of where to direct our efforts, risks mystifying rather than clarifying the depth of what we need to confront, understand and address.
A fuller account must begin by recognising that the relationship between the manosphere and its impacts on the current state of feminism are embedded within a larger context. That larger context includes a decline in democracy and trust in institutions, rising economic inequality, the invention of social media and the privatisation of the public square it has enabled. It will also require understanding the specific manner in which those forces have hollowed out feminism’s capacity to progress greater gender equality. It will require admitting to the feminist movement’s own failures to deliver or sustain its promise of gender equality accessible to all women…
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