Why many young women no longer fit traditional feminist labels

For decades, feminism was largely understood as the fight for women’s equality, the belief that women deserve the same rights, opportunities and freedoms as men. But in 2026, especially online, feminism no longer feels like a single movement with a single definition.

Across TikTok, podcasts and social media discussions, young women are increasingly questioning what empowerment actually looks like in practice. Conversations, once centred mainly on workplace equality and legal rights, have expanded into debates about beauty standards, femininity, motherhood, religion, and the pressure to optimise oneself constantly.

At the centre of these discussions is a growing tension: are women genuinely making free choices, or are those choices still shaped by patriarchal expectations?

In a viral video, Amy Lee, a social media influencer, admitted she no longer knew where she stood between liberal feminism and radical feminism.

“The goal of radical feminism is to abolish patriarchy,” she said.

“Whereas liberal feminism is known to repackage ways women are oppressed to seem empowering.”

She questioned whether beauty culture, hyper-sexualisation and the pressure to constantly enhance appearance could ever be separated from societal conditioning.

“But I also know we are just playing the cards we have been dealt,” she added.

“So what is the true solution if either route is dictated by our oppressor?”

That uncertainty has become increasingly visible, where feminism is no longer treated as a fixed ideology but as an ongoing negotiation between freedom, identity and expectation.

But online discourse does not reflect every woman’s reality. For Regina Oduor, a university student, many modern feminist spaces feel alienating.

While she believes women deserve dignity and opportunity, she questioned whether some feminist conversations place too much emphasis on competition between men and women rather than coexistence.

“I’d rather live in a world that is fair, but not equal,” she said.

“A world that honours the uniqueness of men and women, where our strengths complement one another instead of competing with each other.”

To Regina, equality and equity are not necessarily the same thing. While equality focuses on sameness, she believes equity recognises that men and women experience different realities and expectations.

“True empowerment doesn’t come from wanting what men have,” she said.

“It comes from understanding our differences and the balance between us.”

Her perspective reflects a growing number of women who feel disconnected from mainstream feminist labels while still advocating for women’s dignity and independence.

“Sometimes it feels like success for women is only validated when it mirrors men,” Regina said.

“But I don’t think strength only looks one way.”

Those contradictions are not only ideological. For many women, they shape everyday experiences in workplaces and public life.

That tension between empowerment and expectation is something Maimuna Hassan knows well.

Raised by a single mother she describes as both “mother and father at the same time,” the Kitale-based businesswoman said her understanding of womanhood was shaped by faith, sacrifice, resilience and responsibility.

“What comes to my mind is motherhood and nurturing,” she said when asked what feminism meant to her.

“Like the old-fashioned way that I saw my mum. Sacrificing everything for the family and the kids.”

After earning a Scholarship through academic performance, Maimuna entered the business world, believing hard work alone would determine success. Instead, she said she quickly realised how often women in leadership are forced to repeatedly prove themselves in male-dominated spaces.

“Sometimes when you give instructions, they don’t take you seriously,” she said.

“When they hear the same instruction from a man, they take it.”

She recalled clients asking to speak to “the owner,” despite her being the co-owner herself.

“It’s passive-aggressive,” she said. “But my mum raised me to be tough. I simply won’t back down.”

Her experience reflects broader workplace realities. Data from UN Women confirms that female leaders frequently endure higher levels of public scrutiny, persistent gender biases, and credibility challenges compared to their male peers.

At the same time, Maimuna rejects the idea that faith, femininity or motherhood are inherently incompatible with empowerment.

“I’m proof that you can be a hijabi and work,” she said.

“Neither my faith nor gender has ever stopped me from doing anything.”

For many young women, however, the pressure surrounding womanhood extends beyond authority and competence. Appearance and perception have increasingly become part of the equation, too.

Mercy Njuguna, a Nairobi-based corporate professional, described feeling caught between visibility and credibility.

“Pretty privilege is very real, but it’s complicated,” she said.

“Sometimes being attractive opens doors socially, but it can also make people underestimate your intelligence or assume you didn’t work hard to get where you are.”

She explained that many women enter professional spaces believing merit alone will determine how they are treated, only to discover how heavily appearance shapes perception.

“As women, especially young women from humble backgrounds, you grow up already feeling like you have to work twice as hard just to be noticed,” she said.

“Then you enter the corporate world and realise competence is not always the first thing people see.”

Her experience reflects concerns commonly raised within liberal feminist conversations around workplace equality and gender bias, while also touching on newer critiques surrounding beauty culture online.

“If you don’t make an effort with your appearance, people can see you as lazy or unprofessional,” Mercy said.

“But if you’re too glamorous or feminine, suddenly you’re not taken seriously.”

Experiences like Mercy’s reflect broader workplace inequalities. According to the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report, women remain underrepresented in leadership positions globally despite increased participation in the workforce.

Many women interviewed also pointed to social media as one of the biggest forces shaping modern womanhood today.

“Nothing is ever enough now,” Maimuna said.

“Social media has shown girls how to dress, how to look, where to eat, and where to go. It adds more pressure.”

She worries young girls are constantly measuring themselves against curated online lifestyles and unrealistic beauty standards.

“In our time, you could go out without makeup and feel okay,” she said.

“Now you feel like you constantly have to look a certain way.”

Concerns around digital pressure have increasingly been reflected in global research.

UNESCO has warned that comparison-driven online culture can negatively affect self-esteem and mental well-being among young people, particularly girls and young women.

Perhaps that is where the modern conversation around feminism now sits, not within one ideology, but within a generation of women trying to define freedom for themselves in ways that often overlap, contradict and evolve.

For many young women today, empowerment is no longer something easily categorised. It can look like ambition and softness, independence and faith, femininity and resistance, sometimes all at once.

And maybe that is what makes the conversation so emotionally exhausting for many women today: the feeling that no matter which version of womanhood they choose, they are still being measured against someone else’s definition of what empowerment should look like.

And underneath it all, one question continues to surface: 

What does true freedom actually look like?