I'm not a huge fan of the word 'oppression' when it comes to feminism. Are women 'oppressed'? Surely in places like Yemen or Somalia, but it becomes harder to use the word 'oppressed' straightforwardly when referring to, for example, middle class white women in France.
'Oppression' to me recalls the word 'repression' and involves an active attempt to repress and control populations.
Even worse is 'marginalization', which I associate with populations on the fringes: imprisoned people, people in psychiatric institutions, the homeless, survival sex workers.
I think the use of the word 'oppression' is part of why a lot of women don't relate to feminism - they don't feel oppressed, at least not as women. If they are normie gender-conforming hetero women with average sex drives, there's a good chance they won't rub against the bars of womanhood for a fair amount of time.
I've been gender non-conforming since I was a little kid, so it was impossible for me to not notice all the ways in which girlhood and womanhood were cages. But if I had been more gender conforming, I may have been another one of those women who believed there is no longer any need for feminism, or even that we need feminism "for femininity," as if "masculine" women were the ones putting their feet on our necks.
My preferred term is the subordination of women, as this more accurately describes what happens to women all over the world, across classes. One can be quite happy being a subordinate. Every hierarchy needs someone on top and someone below. Many women are content to be below, so long as they are treated nicely. It does not bother them that there is a hierarchy at all.
One can even come to eroticize one's subordination - hence why so much of female-oriented erotic material is about uncompromisingly macho men who take what they want from the haplessly desirable protagonist. So much of the language is violent and domineering. It is consensual and desired and written by women, but it does not change that is what being described is the eroticization of one's own subjugation.
Oppression carries with it a vital force. Being oppressed has an existential threat to it. In my research, I have found it very rare that minority ethnic groups ever enjoy their subordinate status. At best, it is accepted as an uneasy compromise to survive in a harsh environment among enemies. But very few ethnic minority groups overtly believe that the majority ethnic group is actually superior to them.
Maybe class is a better comparison for the awareness problem. Many working class people are not aware at all that they are being exploited. Many working class and even poor people are happy and live fulfilled lives. Many of them have internalized their own subordination. "Those people are rich because they worked harder than us. They deserve it. I'm not a rich-hater." "Men are allowed into the public world and women are secluded because women are distracting to men. Women are better off in the home, anyway. I'm not a man-hater."
Another commonality is that it can be difficult for people of one class to see themselves as part of a group. Leftists find it hard to get Americans to visualize themselves among class lines.
Meanwhile, a lot of women do not seem to view other women as belonging to a 'class' with them, with similar interests. At most, they subdivide women into categories like 'married', 'unmarried', 'has children', 'has career', and they focus on their own personal subdivision, which is the one they care about.
I'm reading a (depressing) book on women in science that takes place in the 1960s. One of the more notable things is that there were women in this era, before second-wave feminism really took off, saying nobody needs feminism anymore, because it's a new enlightened era and women have all their rights now.
Funny that, I was reading a book in the 1890s, also about women in science, where one of the women comments on sexism noting that "and they say that this is an enlightened era!" Which means that in the 1890s there were people saying "Who needs a women's movement? We're so enlightened these days!"
One of the hardest things about feminist activism is realizing how many women basically have limited empathy for women outside their 'category'. Married women, unmarried women, women with careers, childless women, single women, sex workers, full service survival sex workers, you name it.
It's very similar to socialist work in that way. You need to get a whole class of people to realize that they are a class, and that they should care about the other people in that class, because their fates are bound up in one another.
This is why, in my opinion, feminist activism inevitably tends towards the socialistic, because it is trying to create solidarity among one of the broadest swathes out there. We're trying to get all these people into a movement, or multiple aligned movements.
And while it's rarely talked about in this way, this is also something that makes feminism a threat to the powers that be, because it involves working class solidarity and cross-racial solidarity. Not to mention the inherent threat of destabilizing the gender hierarchy.
But it's important to use accurate language to get people involved, and the reality is that 'oppressed' is quite a difficult word for people to identify with when they live in the first world and aren't being gunned down in the streets. Many women don't believe they are being 'oppressed' when they live in gender roles that keep them from interacting with men. Perhaps they are not 'oppressed'. But they are certainly subordinate, and certainly 'other'. Whether they choose to accept this as their permanent status and cope as well as they can, or whether they choose to fight against this system is another thing.