Kiwi women may have got the vote 125 years ago, but there's a group still struggling to be accepted by the feminist movement: transgender women.

Feminism's gone through many phases: the first wave got us the vote, the second got us birth control and the third fought racism and classism as well as misogyny.

We're now in the midst of what could reasonably be called fourth wave feminism, which has presented activists with a question more nebulous and divisive than any other before: do women who were assigned male at birth belong in the movement?

Ruby Johnson was elected chairwoman of the Auckland University Campus Feminist Collective last year, which she says wouldn't have happened 10 or even five years ago.

"It wasn't always an inclusive group, so [being elected] felt really cool."

A transgender woman and an 'intersectional' feminist, she believes to free all women from the bonds of patriarchy, activism must tackle more than sexism alone.

"You're never going to have a society where women are free and equal if homophobia and transphobia are still rampant. Fixing those is part of the problem, because you can't have people having these slurs hurled at them based on their femininity, and then say 'But we respect women anyway'."