Yahoo's CEO Marissa Mayer caused a furore last year when she said that she didn't have the 'militant drive' and the 'chip on the shoulder' that was required of the modern day feminist.
It was a statement that seemed directly at odds with her circumstances: the 37-year-old is one of the most powerful women in the technology industry, Google's first female engineer and now head of a Fortune 500 company. After the birth of her first child just months into her new role, she resolved the angst of mother-child separation by building a nursery alongside her office so that she could bring the baby to work.
Mayer might not call herself a feminist, but in smashing through the glass ceiling of a male-dominated industry she is standing, in part, on the shoulders of all those feminists from decades and centuries past who spent their lives fighting for gender equality.
While her comments have offended the women for whom the connections between modern-day female liberty and the feminist movement are still obvious and strong, they also highlight the way in which progress has transformed the feminist ideal in the western world.
Although women still earn considerably less than men for the same work, are not well-represented at senior levels in business and politics and are often valued for their youth and beauty rather than their skills and expertise, they exist in a largely egalitarian milieu when compared to women in developing countries.
In Australia, girls are outperforming boys at school, more of them are going on to university, and less of them are being discriminated against in the workplace. There is no need for militant drive and a chip on the shoulder when the fight has already been won.
Despite all this, feminism is still as relevant as ever, if only as a structure with which to maintain the advancements that have brought us to this point and to ensure that we don't regress.
But the lack of buy-in from women like Mayer, and the argument among women as to what constitutes a feminist, suggests feminism as a philosophy needs to expand its definition, to be flexible and inclusive so that it reflects the society in which we now live rather than the deeply inequitable era to which it originally responded.
'We shouldn't talk about feminism but feminisms,' says Chika Unigwe (pictured), a Nigerian-Belgian writer whose work explores the motivations of women and the way in which they empower themselves in the most dire of circumstances. Unigwe has been a guest at this year's Adelaide Writers' Week, which is part of Adelaide Festival.
'You can wear power suits to work and be a feminist, and you can stay home and raise your seven kids and still be a feminist. What happens now is that feminism blocks out certain women, women who see themselves as feminists but who choose to stay home and raise their kids. At the moment there is no space for them — there are choices that you have to make if you want to be called feminist.'
The choices she speaks about — putting children in care, pursuing a career, eschewing your husband's name, wearing unfeminine clothes, even disliking men — are estranging young women from the West's aggressive and individualistic form of feminism, and turning the term 'feminist' into a pejorative statement.
Unigwe says women might find its antidote in her home continent of Africa, where community-centric, gender-inclusive ideologies have been espoused in recent decades: womanism, which includes racial, cultural, national, economic and political considerations; motherism, which elevates motherhood, nature, nurture, and respect for the environment; stiwanism, which entrenches equal female participation in the social transformation of Africa.
The most recent African feminism — and the one Unigwe prefers — is nego-feminism, a concept spawned by Obioma Nnaemeka, a Nigerian professor and expert in the field of gender studies and development. Taking its name from the words 'negotiation' and 'no ego', nego-feminism accommodates traditional family structures and actively incorporates in its philosophy negotiation, complementarity and collaboration.
It's a movement that seeks to advance both men and women within the traditional construct, taking the gentle approach rather than ripping women from the family bosom and setting them on their own pedestal as so many people feel Western feminism has done.
'Western feminism says that women are at the centre,' Unigwe explains. 'It's almost taboo to say that you're not an individual, that you see yourself in terms of being a mother. In nego-feminism, women are part of an extension which includes other women and their own children.'
As we mark International Women's Day today, we may reflect that things have never looked better for women in the West. Mayer is captaining industry while her baby boy sleeps in a nursery nearby; Julia Gillard is leading her country; girls everywhere are taking up opportunities never dreamed of by their grandmothers.
As the old feminist guard continues to chip away at the last vestiges of sexism and inequality, let's take a leaf out of our African sisters' book: drop the aggression and ego, nurture an embracing sisterhood, invite men to be partners in social change and work in good faith towards the inclusive society our feminist forbears longed for.
Catherine Marshall is a journalist and travel writer. Adelaide Festival is on until 17 March 2013.