A ‘Feminist Instruction’: Women’s Narratives of Feminist Becoming

While there has been considerable research attention to how girls and young women understand and respond to feminism, there has been less research on how women come to feminism and become feminists. Given the rise in popular and digital feminisms, as well as the continuing repudiation of feminism by young women, an exploration of what sparks women’s feminist becoming or journey is timely. In this article, I draw on the data from 7 focus group interviews conducted with 29 feminists in New Zealand. I explore the experiences that triggered participants’ feminist journeys/becomings. Participants in this study constituted diverse moments, events, practices and periods of their lives as the trigger for their feminist becoming. These occurred at different points in their lives, ranging from childhood to their 50s, often many years before they identified as feminists. Through attention to similarities and differences in participants’ accounts, I complicate age and generation-based arguments about feminist becoming and identification.