Ms. Mayer, by contrast, has said she does not consider herself a feminist, and (perhaps, to be fair to her, the words were taken out of context) told an interviewer that she didn’t think she had “the militant drive and sort of the chip on the shoulder that sometimes comes with that.”

Unhappiness over her decision to ban working at home for Yahoo staff members intensified when reports emerged of the nursery she had built for her newborn child next to her office — reminding us that she has little experience of the regular struggles around child care, and perhaps has little need for the support of campaigning feminists.

Ms. Sandberg’s desire to teach women “to negotiate so they get paid more” has only marginal relevance to the millions of low-paid women in the United States and Britain who have very slim prospects of increasing their pay packets from the minimum wage that people employed in the five C’s — caring, cashiering, catering, cleaning and clerical work — can expect.

The Institute for Public Policy Research report says a fairer feminist campaign would focus more on “raising the quality and status of the jobs that women do” — perhaps by creating a better pay structure for workers in the care sector (most of whom are women) and ensuring that they get proper training and are paid a living wage.

British feminist activists will find the general argument a bit harsh. As well as campaigning for greater representation of women in positions of power, the Fawcett Society — the leading feminist campaign group here — also has a Cutting Women Out campaign, calling on the government to introduce a women’s employment strategy, designed to address some of the problems connected with the fact that women make up the majority of those in low-paid jobs and unpaid caring roles.

Ceri Goddard, Fawcett’s chief executive, said it was helpful to highlight the “particular challenges being faced by low-income women, which often don’t get the airtime they should,” but she added that it was “both unhelpful and inaccurate to blame feminism — a very broad movement working on several fronts — for the lack of progress on these issues.”

“Feminism is the not the cause of inequality between women and men or indeed between different women — it’s the cure,” Ms. Goddard said. “We haven’t failed — we just have a long way to go. Pitting campaigns for women’s representation in the political and financial institutions that shape our lives against calls for a higher minimum wage or more child care is both simplistic and blinkered. They are all important,” she said.