Feminism statistics show a movement that is widely viewed as empowering while still being described as polarizing and incomplete. In a 2020 Pew Research Center survey, 61% of U.S. women said “feminist” described them very or somewhat well. At the global level, the World Bank’s 2024 assessment found that women enjoy 64% of the legal protections available to men when violence and childcare are included, while UN Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union reported that women held 27.2% of parliamentary seats worldwide in 2025.
Contents
- How Americans identify with feminism
- What people think feminism has achieved
- How views differ by age, education, and politics
- Legal rights and protections worldwide
- Gender equality in the United States
- Women’s political representation
- What people say about equality around the world
How Americans identify with feminism
The 2020 Pew Research Center feminism survey measured whether the word “feminist” described respondents, rather than asking whether they supported every position associated with feminism. Among U.S. women, 19% said the term described them very well and 42% said it described them somewhat well. Together, those responses amounted to 61% who felt the label fit at least somewhat well.
Identification varied by education. Seventy-two percent of U.S. women with at least a bachelor’s degree said “feminist” described them very or somewhat well, compared with 56% of women with less than a bachelor’s degree. Among men, 46% of those with at least a bachelor’s degree gave that response, compared with 37% of men with less education.
Political affiliation also marked a large difference. Seventy-five percent of Democratic and Democratic-leaning women said the term described them very or somewhat well, compared with 42% of Republican and Republican-leaning women. Among Democratic men, 54% gave that response, while 26% of Republican men did. Within the Democratic group, 37% of women with at least a bachelor’s degree said “feminist” described them very well.
Age differences were visible in the share saying the term described them very well:
| U.S. women’s age group | Said “feminist” described them very well |
|---|---|
| Ages 18–29 | 27% |
| Ages 30–49 | 19% |
| Ages 50–64 | 12% |
| Ages 65 and older | 20% |
These figures describe the fit of a label at the time of the 2020 survey. They do not measure every form of feminist belief or participation, and they should not be read as a count of people who belong to a formal organization.
What people think feminism has achieved
Americans in the same 2020 Pew Research Center survey gave mixed assessments of the feminist movement’s achievements. Twenty-two percent said the movement had done a great deal to advance women’s rights in the United States, while 48% said it had done a fair amount. The two responses together represented 70% who saw at least a fair amount of progress.
The language people used to describe feminism also contained both positive and critical terms. Sixty-four percent of Americans said feminism was empowering, and 42% said it was inclusive. At the same time, 45% called it polarizing and 30% called it outdated.
Views among people who identified with feminism were not uniformly positive. Forty-three percent of adults who said feminism described them very or somewhat well also described feminism as polarizing. In addition, 45% of adults who identified with feminism said they would not describe it as inclusive. That combination suggests that identification with a movement and criticism of its public image can exist together.
Men and women differed in some descriptions. Sixty percent of U.S. men said feminism was empowering. Among U.S. women younger than 50, 73% said it was empowering, compared with 63% of women ages 50 and older. Among women younger than 30, 56% said feminism was inclusive and 17% said it was outdated.
How views differ by age, education, and politics
Education was associated with more positive descriptions among U.S. women. Seventy-six percent of women with at least a bachelor’s degree said feminism was empowering, compared with 64% of women with some college education or less. Fifty-four percent of women with at least a bachelor’s degree called feminism inclusive, compared with 41% of women with some college education or less. The education split also appeared in perceptions of conflict: 50% of women with at least a bachelor’s degree called feminism polarizing, compared with 34% of women with some college education or less.
Party differences were pronounced in the 2020 results:
| Group | Empowering | Inclusive | Polarizing | Outdated |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Democrats | 76% | 51% | 40% | 20% |
| Republicans | 49% | 32% | 51% | 42% |
| Democratic women | 77% | 53% | — | 18% |
| Republican women | 56% | 36% | — | 36% |
The full figures for Democratic and Republican women include the empowering, inclusive, and outdated descriptions reported by Pew Research Center. The supplied results did not provide corresponding polarizing percentages for those two women’s groups, so that comparison is left blank rather than inferred.
Race and ethnicity were also associated with different assessments. Forty-nine percent of white adults said feminism was polarizing, compared with 34% of Black adults and 36% of Hispanic adults. Thirty-two percent of white adults called feminism outdated, compared with 24% of Black adults and 26% of Hispanic adults.
Legal rights and protections worldwide
The World Bank’s Women, Business, and the Law 2024 compared women’s and men’s legal frameworks across 190 economies. Its 2024 estimate put women’s legal protections at 64% of men’s when violence and childcare were included. Countries had established, on average, less than 40% of the systems needed to fully implement equal-opportunity laws. The World Bank also said closing the gender gap could raise global GDP by more than 20%; this is an economic estimate, not a realized increase.
Specific legal measures showed uneven coverage. Ninety-eight economies had enacted legislation mandating equal pay for women for work of equal value. Thirty-five economies had adopted pay-transparency measures or enforcement mechanisms addressing the pay gap. One hundred fifty-one economies had laws prohibiting sexual harassment in the workplace, while 39 had laws prohibiting sexual harassment in public spaces.
The same World Bank assessment illustrated the difference between rights on paper and implementation. Togo’s legal framework gave women roughly 77% of the rights available to men, but the country had established only 27% of the systems necessary for full implementation of women’s legal rights. Across the economies assessed, the global average women’s safety score was 36 out of 100.
Gender equality in the United States
UN Women’s Data Hub country fact sheet for the United States reported that 88.9% of legal frameworks promoting, enforcing, and monitoring gender equality were in place. Its area scores were 70 for the gender-equality legal framework, 88.89 for violence against women, 80 for employment and economic benefits, and 90.91 for marriage and family.
The indicators cover different years and should be read with their measurement dates. The adolescent birth rate was 13.5 births per 1,000 women ages 15 to 19 in 2022. In 2017, 78.4% of women ages 15 to 49 had their need for family planning satisfied with modern methods. In 2018, 6% of women ages 15 to 49 reported physical or sexual violence from a current or former intimate partner in the previous 12 months.
Work and care were measured in other ways. Women held 42.57% of managerial positions in the reported UN Women indicator. Women and girls ages 15 and older spent 15.1% of their time on unpaid care and domestic work, compared with 10.1% for men. Only 36.1% of gender-related Sustainable Development Goal indicators were available for the United States as of December 2020, an important limitation on what can be measured consistently.
Women’s political representation
UN Women and the Inter-Parliamentary Union reported that women served as Heads of State or Government in only 25 countries as of 2025. Women made up 27.2% of Members of Parliament globally in 2025, and fewer than one in four cabinet ministers was a woman: the reported share was 22.9%.
Leadership at the parliamentary officer level also remained uneven. Of 244 chambers in 172 countries, 124 had at least one woman Deputy Speaker in 2025. In the United States, women held 29.1% of parliamentary seats as of February 2024, according to the UN Women Data Hub country fact sheet. The global and U.S. figures come from different reporting periods and should not be treated as a single-year ranking.
What people say about equality around the world
A 2020 Pew Research Center global gender equality survey covering 34 countries found broad support for equal rights. Across those countries, a median of 94% said it was important for women to have the same rights as men. A median of 75% thought women in their country would eventually have the same rights as men, but only a median of 5% volunteered that women already had equality.
Perceptions of opportunity were less positive. A median of 54% said men generally had more opportunities than women for high-paying jobs. A median of 44% said men had more opportunities to be leaders in their community. By contrast, a median of 81% said men and women generally had the same opportunities for a good education, and 63% said they had the same opportunities to express political views.
The survey also measured views that directly reveal tension between equality and scarcity. Across the 34 countries, a median of 40% said men should have more right to a job than women when jobs were scarce. A median of 46% said men had a better life than women in their country.
Household decision-making produced different results. A median of 55% said men and women had about the same influence over important household-finance decisions; the corresponding figure was 56% for decisions about how to raise children and 62% for family religious-practice decisions.
U.S. responses were more specific. Sixty-six percent of U.S. women said men had more opportunities for high-paying jobs than women, compared with 53% of U.S. men. Thirty-six percent of U.S. women said men had more opportunities to express political views, compared with 28% of men.
Country-level results showed why global medians conceal local differences. In Turkey, 61% of men said men had more influence than women over household-finance decisions, compared with 48% of women. In Japan, 29% said women had more influence over those decisions, while 16% said men did. In Tunisia, 24% said women had more opportunities than men to obtain a good education, while 6% said men had more opportunities.