The Art of Small-Scale Feminism

On International Women’s Day, I reflected on how far we’ve come. A century ago, women were chaining themselves to government buildings for the right to vote. Today, I take for granted that I can pursue higher education, work for the same salary as my male colleagues, open a bank account without a husband’s permission, and get married because I want to, not because I’d otherwise be financially doomed. And yet.

Despite these hard-won freedoms, I grew up being told by my mother, a self-proclaimed feminist, that I needed to help my brother with his schoolwork and take on twice the household chores. When I protested — "Why can’t he do his own ironing?" or "Can he not at least attempt to do his own homework?" — I was met with a patient but dismissive explanation: "He just lacks the fine motor skills and the academic inclination that you have." In her mind, this wasn’t a reinforcement of archaic gender roles, but rather a practical deployment of strengths: I was capable, therefore I should compensate for his supposed deficiencies. That she had unknowingly handed him the perfect excuse to weaponise his incompetence was entirely lost on her. Like every other teenager on the planet, my brother had no desire to do his homework or ironing, and he quickly deduced that if he feigned helplessness, he might just get out of doing it. “What can you do? Boys will be boys..." would say my grandmother — a phrase that has, for generations, quietly absolved men of basic responsibilities.

At school, my physics teacher, noting that our class was made up entirely of girls, reassured us in a well-meaning tone that she would simplify the curriculum since "women’s brains aren’t wired for physics in the same way men’s are." My PE teacher, meanwhile, solemnly gathered the female students to remind us that now that we were running alongside the boys, we needed to be mindful of what we wore — no tank tops, no sports bras — lest we distract them. Several boys were running shirtless to cope with the heat, entirely unbothered, and somehow the girls managed to keep focus.

None of these people had malicious intentions. They were just another cog in the wheel of generationally inherited nonsense. These were not grand acts of oppression, but rather quiet insidious manifestations of microsexism — the unexamined biases that shape our daily lives. And if microsexism is the problem, microfeminism is the antidote.

Microfeminism is the art of resisting these small but pervasive forms of sexism through subtle, intentional acts. It is not about grand, inflammatory gestures, but rather a quiet, persistent chipping away at the assumptions that continue to uphold gender inequality. Take my PE teacher’s comment. In the stunned silence that followed, one of my classmates innocently asked, "I don’t understand what you mean by that." It was a masterstroke. Rather than directly challenging his authority she feigned confusion, backing him into a corner where he had to explain his double standard. He looked around uncomfortably before muttering, "You know what I mean..." And that was our cue. We all put on our best perplexed faces and started pressing for clarification. The conversation unraveled quickly, and just like that, the ‘distraction’ rule was quietly abandoned.

University is fertile ground for microfeminist rebellion. Studies show that men tend to dominate classroom discussions, speaking more often and longer than women. If a woman is interrupted or her idea dismissed, a simple, "I think [her name] was saying something interesting just now — could we go back to that?" is a quiet yet powerful act of resistance. And then, of course, there is weaponised incompetence — a phenomenon my brother mastered early but which plagues women well into adulthood and often appears in group projects. The solution? A pleasantly delivered “Oh no, I trust you to figure it out!” followed by absolute refusal to lift a finger.

Microfeminism also extends into our everyday interactions. Next time you’re walking, hold your ground and notice how often men expect you to move out of the way for them. Refuse to yield — let them run into you if needed. Language also plays a major role: many people automatically assume that professors, doctors, and CEOs are men, while teachers, nurses, and assistants are women. Flipping the default — referring to an unnamed professor or expert as ‘she’ — challenges this bias. Even something as simple as rethinking how we compliment young girls is an act of microfeminism. Instead of defaulting to ‘cute’ or ‘pretty’, try ‘clever’, ‘brave’, or ‘creative’. 

Cultural shifts do not happen overnight; they happen in the everyday, in the quiet, in the seemingly inconsequential. A small one takes place every time a woman holds her ground on a crowded footpath and every time we refuse to let a sexist joke go unchallenged. The suffragettes smashed windows and went on hunger strikes. You? You just have to raise an eyebrow and ask, "Sorry, what do you mean by that?"

Image from Wikimedia Commons