Abstract

Feminist researchers, scholars and activists have always been concerned with contemporary issues. At the heart of feminist approaches are critical challenges to gendered inequality manifest in social, political and cultural ideas, policies and practices at particular moments in time. Contemporary issues in feminist thought and political action include a complex array of social problems connected to social inequality. The issues that matter most to feminists differ according to the organization and experience of social life at any one point in time. Some contemporary feminist issues have an enduring quality to them and appear as important across generations or re-emerge in different social and political contexts at different historical moments. For example, perhaps the most pressing feminist issues globally in twenty-first-century life concern: the division of domestic labour, gendered inequality in pay and position in the workplace, media representation of women, violence against women, and the significance of intersectionality and inequality in shaping the lives of diverse groups of women and girls. Yet each one of these so-called contemporary issues has some connection to the historical trajectory of feminist scholarship and activism, and to the lived experiences of women over time. As Reger and Taylor point out, early feminist campaigns focusing on suffrage, civil rights, reproductive rights and citizenship have provided legislative and political gains for many women yet there remain legacies of these issues still to challenge and resolve in contemporary contexts.