Re: In today's news...
I can't really think of a thing feminism has done in the last five years that has been remotely positive, but it might help to hear about it if anybody cares to share such information.
Well, I think part of that is because a number of feminist ideas have become incorporated into mainstream thought by now.
Let's take the Nobel Prize winner, Malala, who got shot in the head by the Taliban for wanting education as a girl. In a number of places in the world, girls are not legally guaranteed even a basic education - the continued work for school coverage and access is fundamentally feminist, although I suspect many of us just think of it as "common sense" or "fairness" by now.
Then there's healthcare access. That whole Planned Parenthood debacle in the US is a step in a longer conflict between opposing sides, where self-declared feminists generally side with the pro-choice arguments. But we an take it further - for example, in India, I believe, there was a case some years ago about how in major cities, there were public restrooms only for men (urinals, mostly, I believe), because they were just cheaper and easier to set up. There was political battle to get more female-friendly restrooms available.
Speaking of India, you might have heard of the recent rapes of low-caste women. This is a case of
intersectionality, where different social categories cross in order to make a particularly vulnerable group. In extreme cases, women have actually been subjected to gang rape as a form of punishment. This has riled up a lot of Indian women, acting as groups, but also a lot of Indian men, and also various religious groups that find the practice inexcusable. While the notion of not allowing women to be punished with gang rape might seem like obvious judicial fairness and a human rights issue to us, the idea of bodily autonomy of women is a very feminist one.
Other issues I can think of is stuff like worker's rights in south-east asia, as a lot of the light industry (textile, electronics) there rely on cheap and easily replaceable female labour. Young women move to cities for a couple of years, work in the factories under grueling conditions, and then either return to their home regions (often rural areas). Unfortunately, a lot of these women are economically exploited because many countries create specific zones where labour laws are more lax so as to appease international corporations. There is no health coverage, pensions, or indeed the right to organize. This is another case of how class concerns intersect with gender concerns, and so it might not seem obvious that labor rights are also feminist in these cases. I could've mentioned a similar case in Mexico, where for example factory administrators brush away huge numbers of rapes in their vicinity on the fact that the largely single, young females they employ are promiscuous, while neglecting the fact that they often force women to work very late shifts, with no organized transport off the industrial district, forcing women to walk through dangerous urban areas.
I could probably mention more, but if one stops focusing on the most ridiculous or culturally-radical
avant-garde notions within the feminist spectrum, I'd argue that there is a lot of very important issues where feminism can be a powerful tool towards equality and an imporoved quality of life for many, many people.
