Welcome to the 'microfeminist' revolution: Women clap back at everyday sexism on TikTok

One Sunday evening in March as Ashley Chaney prepared for the workweek, she rolled over in bed and flipped on her camera to capture what was on her mind.

“When I send an email, let’s say to a CEO, and you have to copy their assistant for scheduling purposes, if the assistant is a female, I will always, in the ‘email to’ line, enter their address before the CEO’s,’” Chaney, 38, a host and producer from Los Angeles, said in the TikTok video she dubbed “girl’s girl, corporate edition.”

“That’s my favorite form of microfeminism,” she said. “What’s yours?”

Watched by 2.8 million, the TikTok video touched off a viral conversation about microfeminism, inspiring women – and men – to respond with their own small but mighty clapbacks at sexism that are spreading online and off.

Refusing to step aside for a man barreling down the sidewalk? That’s microfeminism. Claiming the armrest when you’re in the middle seat or the whole seat when the guy next to you on the subway is “manspreading?” Those, too, are acts of microfeminism.

So is greeting women first in a meeting, referring to "hers and his," assuming a CEO is a she and saying "girls" instead of "guys" as a gender-neutral term.

“I’m doing this thing, this tiny little act of collaboration with women, and I wondered if they noticed, and if anyone else is doing it,” Chaney told USA TODAY. “And, wow, I learned they absolutely do.”

And now these everyday acts of defiance are turning into an online movement.

Microfeminism has entered the zeitgeist, said New York University psychology professor Tessa West, and it's taking on "a whole new TikTok-defined meaning.”

What is microfeminism? What are micro acts of feminism?

Gabriella Lowgren, who works in the game development industry in Australia, chimed in on the conversation Chaney started. She said she keeps talking over a man who tries to interrupt her until he becomes so uncomfortable that he stops. And she calls out men who take credit for a woman’s work. “Oh John,” she’ll say, “that’s a fantastic point. I think it’s really relevant in this conversation. I also really enjoyed it when Mary brought it up earlier.”

N'Dea Irvin-Choy, 28, a former biomedical engineer turned travel influencer, called out the overlapping oppression that Black women face when race and gender intersect.

“Anytime I had a presentation with a diagram or a schematic of a woman, I would immediately change her skin tone to brown,” Irvin-Choy said in a TikTok video.

She gave other examples of Black womanisms like displaying the picture of a Black female scientist and her LinkedIn when discussing her work during a presentation.

“I wanted to show people that microfeminism is important but, due to the increased challenges Black women face in the workforce, it is important to uplift them, even more, to be seen, heard and respected,” Irvin-Choy told USA TODAY. "I believe it is imperative that the conversation of microfeminism moves beyond feminism and instead begins to focus on intersectional microfeminism."

Social media, TikTok are feminism's 'game-changing amplifier'

The term microfeminism has been around for decades, mostly in academic papers, but it bubbles up from time to time in popular culture, like during the 2020 vice presidential debate when Kamala Harris – the first Black woman and first Asian American woman on a major party ticket – chastised former Vice President Mike Pence for repeatedly interrupting her. “Mr. Vice President,” she said, “I’m speaking.”

“I am not organizing a march or starting a magazine or creating a political campaign. I just speak up. Every. Single. Time,” Vanessa McGrady wrote about microfeminism in 2016 for the online publication Jezebel.

Microfeminism is part of the fourth wave of the feminist movement that is empowering, intersectional and very online.

“Women have always practiced these acts of feminism – albeit imperfectly – from the earliest mythic goddesses to suffragettes to ‘70s feminists like Audre Lorde to Dolly Parton’s Doralee Rhodes in ‘9 to 5,’” McGrady said, referring to the 1980 film also starring Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin as working women who get back at their misogynistic boss, played by the late Dabney Coleman. “But social media is a game-changing amplifier.”

That amplification is working. Microfeminism is fast becoming shorthand for small but deliberate gestures as women wage daily battles to make the workplace more equitable.

Small acts of microfeminism can have big results at work

Everyday sexism is a significant factor in stalling the advancement of women – especially women of color – in the workplace, research shows.

Women are outnumbered 5 to 1 in senior leadership, according to a USA TODAY analysis of top executive officers at the nation's 100 top publicly traded companies, and women of color are outnumbered by men 26 to 1 – a gap five times wider than the disparity for white women.

Faced with a web of invisible yet seemingly impenetrable barriers to executive suites and boardrooms, women get shortchanged in pay and status.

Microfeminism is one way they are fighting back, said workplace expert Julie Nugent. She says small acts – elevating a woman’s voice in a meeting or making sure women are recognized for their contributions – can have a big influence.

“Gender-based discrimination isn't a thing of the past. It continues to impact women at work on multiple fronts – lower pay, underrepresentation in leadership roles and microaggressions – and those things all make work and the working environment more stressful,” said Nugent, senior vice president of global corporate services and community with Catalyst. “I think that’s a big part of why we are seeing this. A new generation of women in the workforce and even those who have been in the workforce for a while are speaking out.”

'This gave me a word for something that I really love to do'

Another factor driving the rise of microfeminism: a shared language.

Women such as Mahlet Yared say they used to quietly challenge gender norms without knowing what to call it.

“I always found it so empowering and effective to have these small ways to lift up and affirm other women,” said Yared, 31, an astrologist and coach from Chicago, who spent a lot of time in male-dominated corporate spaces during college and law school and was moved to post about microfeminism on TikTok. “I think activism is very much in the everyday, and I felt like this gave me a word for something that I really love to do in my daily life, and I was excited to continue the conversation.”

Yared says she was inspired by Katie Wood, a 32-year-old attorney from Tennessee who jumped into the TikTok conversation Chaney started.

The week after Chaney shared her take on microfeminism, Wood posted a TikTok video that also went viral with 2.9 million views.

In it, Wood said that instead of “burning your bra and screaming at people,” she prefers “little acts that make men pissed off,” like defaulting to she/her pronouns when referring to anyone in a leadership role unless she knows that person is a man.

Microfeminism – “small, almost imperceptible, acts that move the needle just a tiny bit towards the middle again” – is necessary because the world is “designed using male specs,” Wood said in an email to USA TODAY.

“They're things that don't require a ton of bravery, and likely won't elicit a lot of pushback, for those people that feel like loud, big, far-reaching acts aren't an option to them,” she said. “It's taking back a little bit of humanity for us at a time.”

Not fans? 'Neck beards living in their mothers' basements'

Though the response to her TikTok video has been mostly positive, there were also “the neck-beards living in their mothers' basements who feel that any act of feminism is an act of war against the male species,” Wood said.

Chaney, too, had her share of trolls hurling sexist insults in the comments.

At first, she was overwhelmed and a little frightened. For weeks, she did not post on TikTok. “I did not expect millions of people to see me talking to the camera from my bed,” Chaney said.

Then, women and men showed up to face down the trolls in micro moments of solidarity. “When you have had privilege for so long, equality starts to feel like a violation,” one commenter responded.

The more men told her to sit down and shut up, the less willing Chaney was to do it. “All that did was make me want to be louder,” Chaney said.

Ultimately what she wants is for microfeminism to become an obsolete term: “I hope someday microfeminism becomes not so much a movement but the norm.”

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: 'Microfeminism:' TikTok's latest trend is a lot more than that