What exasperates feminists? No, it's not men. It's women who can't choke out the F-word in reference to themselves, even though they have reaped so many rewards from the achievements of the movement, and would be horrified to find themselves living in a culture that had never benefited from feminism's influence. A new report launching the website TrustLaw Women, and highlighting the continuing degradation and abuse of millions of women worldwide, offers a sobering reminder of how vital feminism remains. But as hope rises in the feminist breast that a new generation of British women will be less chary of the label, it's probably worth asking exactly why such stubborn reluctance has been so widespread.

The lazy answer is that feminists have a lingering bad image – as man-hating, crop-haired harridans in ill-fitting dungarees. A T-shirt campaign launched a couple of years back by the women's lobbying group the Fawcett Society urged people to display the slogan: "This is what a feminist looks like". The campaign's very existence confirmed that feminism is still worried about "branding". But it's a lot more complex than that. The very fact that some feminists are so willing to accept that women don't want the label for such superficial reasons, rather than crediting women with more profound intellectual discomfort, is an indication that even feminist attitudes can sometimes be dismissive of women and their legitimate concerns.

Feminists (and I'm generalising here) tend towards the conclusion that women who don't sign up are simply hostages to the tyranny of the patriarchy, whose feeble personal consciousnesses have refused to be raised. But there is a lot more to it than that. Feminism has its own troubling flaws, and they are too little addressed. The fundamental and rather serious problem is the blunt and somewhat stubborn emphasis on "equality", difficult enough in a society deeply divided by economic inequality generally, even without the added complication that it's the people with care of children, whatever their sex, whose economic freedom is most compromised the world over.

Feminism has not left behind only the crop-haired harridan image. It has also embraced, then dumped the idea of women who "have it all". The archetypal feminist of the 80s and 90s had a fulfilling and dynamic career, wonderful children, a lovely home and fabulous grooming. Consensus on the impossibility of such a lifestyle for any but the wealthiest has been long-since reached. But the recession and its subsequent deficit have shown all too starkly that even the seeming achievement of more modest autonomy for women is heavily subsidised by the state.

The stock response is that the state has, and should have, a duty to support parents and their children, and that's true up to a point. But it is hard to foster dependence without fostering vulnerability as well. Feminism, in truth, is entirely concerned with limiting female vulnerability, real as well as perceived. But its rhetoric can seem instead to be all about asserting and celebrating female strength.

Sometimes that stops people from seeing what's going on under their noses. The mass entry of women into the workplace in the latter half of the last century was claimed too unequivocally as a purely feminist achievement. Yet the door opened so easily when pushed because the needs of capitalism had undone the bolt. Everyone knows the Empire Windrush didn't dock at Tilbury in 1948 to promote multiculturalism. It arrived to provide cheap labour in the employment marketplace, as women did too. Likewise, the fast-burgeoning demand for professionals did as much to usher women into flashy jobs as female liberation did. The exigencies of economic growth left little room for the wilful oppression of people with powerful intellectual potential on the grounds of their sex (which is not to belittle the absolutely vital contribution that feminism also made).

But equal opportunity in the workplace has not resulted in equal achievement, and not all of this is the fault of continuing chauvinism. Women bear the children and, far more often than not, they wish to be the primary carer for those children. At its most strident, feminism can be mistaken for an ideology designed to make women feel they are wrong to want that.

Worse, feminism has accidentally promoted the idea that it's pretty easy to work and have children, with the right support in place. On even an average income, it's never easy, even once children are at secondary school (though it's certainly easier then). Your priorities change. Work is no longer the most important thing, for a while anyway. Ambition can dissipate.

For many women, that's a self-evident truth. But feminism forbids women from admitting too many self-evident truths, for fear that the utterance of them will encourage discrimination. Feminism is paranoid about its most-feared enemy, the wedge, with its bayonet-thin edge. (This can be best seen in the abortion debate. Pro-choice minds have to be closed to the idea that science can alter the age of foetal viability, because such acknowledgement, even in theory, might offer succour to pro-lifers.)

Feminism is – or can be – so paranoid that it cannot acknowledge that there is a difficulty with being less than forthright about the genuine and intractable dichotomies in the lives of many woman. This itself perpetuates the most damaging wedge of all – between those willing to sign up for feminism, and those who have their reasonable doubts. There needs to be a bit less "tut-tutting" about failure to avow, and a bit more examination of the probable advantages in addressing the concerns of the uncommitted. Among whose number, I'm afraid, I ashamedly count myself.