I'm childless and single in my 60s, yet my life is rich and full of love. Don't blame feminism if you're unhappy in the autumn of your years By Mandy Appleyard for the Daily Mail Published: 16:53, 26 May 2024 | Updated: 16:53, 26 May 2024 e-mail View comments If I were overweight because I gorged on chocolate, I wouldn’t blame Lindt – in the same way that if I’d done a job I loathed for the last 40 years, I wouldn’t hold my school careers adviser responsible. So why writer Petronella Wyatt should blame feminism for the disappointments in her own midlife — childless, manless, depressed — as she did in these pages last week, I have absolutely no idea.
What is feminism? To me, it’s the belief that women are equal to men and should have equal rights and opportunities. It’s not a dirty word: it’s a progressive, positive, enriching, empowering belief which has improved the lives of millions of women, including my own. If, in the autumn of our years, we are disappointed with how our lives turned out, then surely we only have ourselves to blame? We made our choices in life and we must make our peace with the consequences.
Some may say that feminism failed our generation: I say that it made me the woman I am proud to be, writes Mandy Appleyard Petronella argues that she is lonely and depressed because feminism taught her to prioritise a career over a family life, reducing feminism to a crude and lazy binary to bolster her argument. The truth is that millions of women.
