One June day in 2015, I stood outside Yarl’s Wood immigration removal centre near Bedford and heard the women inside singing. “Set her free,” said the graffiti on the walls. “Shut it down.” I had often visited the centre and heard the desperate stories of the women held there. But that day felt hopeful rather than despairing, as hundreds of women – refugees, campaigners, lawyers, members of parliament, actors, writers – gathered around the centre to demand freedom for the women locked up.
When I set up the organisation Women for Refugee Women, I was driven by my belief in solidarity among women. The organisation works with women seeking asylum in Britain to tell their stories and campaign for justice and safety. For years, I felt that belief being proven in practice. Women showed up for other women at events and demonstrations; they volunteered, campaigned, marched, and supported one another.
One of my colleagues at Women for Refugee Women, Marchu Belete, is now the director of Migration Exchange. “Back then, women were so open, enthusiastic, and creative about campaigning with migrant women,” she says. “We didn’t realise how incredible that time was. It was amazing.”
The confidence of feminists in the UK in those years to demand a better world for all women was part of a worldwide phenomenon in the 2010s, a time when women were building new connections with one another all over the globe. Women protested over abortion rights in Ireland, for the right to drive in Saudi Arabia, against digital sex crimes in South Korea, and against sexual violence and femicide in India, Argentina, Brazil, Italy, Turkey, everywhere.
I’m not going to idealise those years, but there was a brightness about where our feminist work was going then, an optimism about the connections we could forge and the changes we could make. Now, everywhere you look in women’s movements, you find division.
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‘In the 2010s, women were building new connections all over the globe’ … a protest in Turkey in 2018. Photograph: Tumay Berkin/EPA
There have always been divisions between women who are apparently working towards shared liberation. Divisions between suffragists and suffragettes, between colonisers and the colonised, between working-class and middle-class women, between those against and those in favour of pornography. But recently divisions among women have become bitterly draining, and many have confided in me how exhausting they find this. One Black woman in her 60s who co-founded an organisation for migrant female survivors of violence said to me recently about the women’s movement in Britain: “We’ve lost our way. There used to be a vision that brought women together. It wasn’t just about personal advancement or separate communities. I don’t know if that still exists.”
And over and over again, I am now shocked by the way that women who call themselves feminists will casually dismiss the struggles and experiences of women who are not like themselves. That dismissal can come from all sides of our polarised debates. If you are on the left, why empathise with Ann Widdecombe facing her attacker in her kitchen? If you are on the right, why care about women fleeing oppression across the world? Can you open your heart to Palestinian women and Israeli women who are targeted by armed men? Can you take seriously the experience of girls abused by grooming gangs and women beaten by the men who protest outside asylum hotels?
Social media takes so much of the blame for these widening divisions. It’s true that feminists, just like everyone else, find that anger is rewarded online. Intransigence results in more attention, more clicks, more followers. Debates around the place of transgender women in feminism became particularly wounding and destructive due to the outrage spiral of social media. And once women have sparred in that polarised online world, it becomes harder and harder to come together to campaign, even for the most importantBut while the divisions online are obvious, offline, women are still building alliances, brick by brick. These alliances may not be as immediately visible to outside observers, but I believe they are quietly growing.
Jessie Brinton, a former journalist, is the founder of a project called Mothership, which has been bringing women together across Britain for in-person “kitchen table conversations” about what matters to them.
She is struck by the hunger she sees among women just to meet one another and talk. “We’ve lost the ‘village’. Women are lonely. That’s what we’ve heard over and over again. We need to rebuild the spaces where women can find each other.” This year, Brinton has spent a lot of time in Wigan, where she has been deeply inspired by the strength of unsung community work that women are doing together, filling gaps left by a lack of public services. “Women who are on the frontline of crises have so much knowledge to share,” she says.
Gill Wright at Northern Heart and Soul in Wigan agrees that the frontline work women do to support one another and their communities is the most important work for feminists right now. Wright co-founded Northern Heart and Soul after leading a mutual aid group through the pandemic. The organisation is not just for women, but it is women-led and aims to empower women facing the greatest challenges of poverty, homelessness, and poor health. With projects including special educational needs play days, arts projects, gardening, and mental health peer support, Wright sees people becoming connected again. “We aren’t putting our energy into changing the system,” she says. “We are focusing our energy on building alternatives.”
That focus on locally based organising often grows into more direct political interventions where women are trying to revitalise democracy. Cullagh Warnock has been involved with women’s organising in the north-east of England for decades. With the establishment of the North East Mayoral Combined Authority – which gave greater powers to local councils and the mayor of the north-east – in 2024, she and other women in her network saw an opportunity to ensure that women’s voices and concerns were heard. One Million Women and Girls is the result, a network that connects women to local politicians across north-east England through face-to-face hustings and events.
When I ask her what the key concerns are that women raise, Warnock tells me that unlike discussions on social media, they are solidly practical. “Women’s safety comes up all the time – women’s safety on public transport, on the streets. And jobs – politicians talk about green jobs, but they are so often male-dominated. Women are asking how this transition is going to work for women.” It’s true that predictions suggest future green jobs, from wind energy to waste management, may skew as much as three to one in favour of men. Warnock believes that by focusing on such practical issues, women can move beyond the inflammatory rhetoric of online debate and get back to what they actually need to build more dignified and safer lives. “What works for women works for everyone.”
This work to improve ordinary women’s lives has taken on new urgency due to the rise of the far right, which is capitalising on women’s sense of insecurity to drive forward ever more divisive politics. In Belfast, Elaine Crory at the Women’s Resource and Development Agency has been working for many years to support women in the face of male violence. She now sees the rise of the far right as the “single biggest issue making things worse for women. It is distracting people from fighting the patriarchy and making the situation less safe for women.”She also stresses the importance of face-to-face conversations, where facilitators can push back against online radicalisation, even though she knows how slow and difficult that work is, given the flood of toxic misinformation on social media. Above all, though, she is encouraged by the way women are leading the fight against the far right. During the recent “racist pogroms,” as she calls them, in Belfast, “communities came together quickly, led by women – migrant women and white women – everyone doing what they could. Women were organising, cooking meals, giving lifts, taking a child to school, literally showing up at houses on fire and getting families to safety. And even now that the immediate need for food and shelter has eased, we are ready. If and when it flares up again, women will organise.”
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So even though the far right tries to twist women’s fears about their safety into anger and racism, women are building alternatives from Belfast to London to Newcastle, just as they are across the world. Belete believes these grassroots connections are now the most vital work, and they hold the key to a better future. “Feminists need to be in communities, we need to be on the ground pushing back. The way to defeat the far right is through the women’s movement.”
It’s important not to fall into false optimism when looking at these examples of resilient and inspiring work by women. This is a time of undeniable crisis for women. Our rights are under threat from authoritarians and misogynists everywhere. As resources become scarcer due to the climate emergency, rising inequality, and conflict, those threats are growing. We can see that one response is to lean into division, to focus only on the individual or the nation, to build walls, to hunker down. But the other response is still to insist that care and connection can be stronger than the hate and the heat, to work day by day to weave those connections – and women are doing that everywhere.
Feminism for a World on Fire by Natasha Walter is published by Little, Brown Book Group (£25). To support the Guardian and the Observer, order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the division in the womens movement written in a natural direct tone
BeginnerLevel Questions
Q What does it mean when people say the womens movement is divided
A It means that different groups of women dont agree on the core priorities goals or methods of feminism Instead of speaking with one voice there are multiple sometimes conflicting factions arguing about what womens rights should look like today
Q What are the main groups or waves of feminism that are fighting
A The waves are a simple way to describe historical eras The first wave focused on legal rights like voting The second wave focused on workplace equality and reproductive rights The third wave pushed for individuality and inclusivity The fourth wave is digital focusing on intersectionality sexual harassment and online activism The conflict is often between the older more traditional secondwave ideas and the newer more inclusive fourthwave ideas
Q What is intersectionality and why does it cause arguments
A Intersectionality is the idea that a womans experience is shaped by other parts of her identity like her race class sexual orientation or disability It causes arguments because some feminists feel that focusing on these differences splits the movement while others feel that ignoring them leaves many women behind
Q Why do some women say they arent feminists even if they believe in equality
A Many women feel the label feminist has become too associated with extreme views manhating or a focus on issues that dont affect them Others feel the movement doesnt represent their specific struggles so they dont want to claim the identity
Q What is the gender pay gap and why is it a hot topic
A The gender pay gap is the average difference in earnings between men and women Its a hot topic because while everyone agrees a gap exists people disagree on the causeswhether its pure discrimination differences in career choices or women taking time off for childcareand therefore disagree on the solutions
AdvancedLevel Questions
Q Is the division in the movement a modern problem or has it always been this way
