With Merriam-Webster naming “feminism” the word of the year, we look back into the Canadian Opinion Research Archive to show the extent to which Canadians identified as feminists between 1992 and 2001. About one in three Canadians across the three surveys conducted by Environics in their Focus Canada series answered yes to the question, “Do you consider yourself to be a feminist?”

While the overall number of Canadians identifying as a feminist did not change, the underlying change in the culture was evident in 2001. Young people, regardless of gender, were equally likely to identify as feminist whereas women were much more likely than men in older age cohorts.

This clearly set the stage for a changing meaning of feminism in the past two decades as generational replacement would reduce the gender-basis for identifying this way. Will look to see if anyone has asked a similar question more recently since it speaks to the cultural impact of feminism.