Emma Thompson says that the sexual revolution of the 1970s and '80s may have encouraged predatory behaviour.
The 63-year-old actress said she felt that modern feminism was about women "finding our space" rather than being "more like men".
It comes ahead of the release of her new film Good Luck To You, Leo Grande co-starring former Fair City star Daryl McCormack, in which she plays a retired teacher who hires a 28-year-old male prostitute after the death of her husband.
She told The Times: "I'm not sure how great the sexual revolution was. I’m not sure whether it benefited us in the ways that are loudly bruited these days.
"It made us more available, I suppose, for sex, because we weren’t going to get pregnant, but I don’t know.
"It also introduced something else, which felt to me and feels to me now when I look back on it a little bit predatory and certainly which led, I think directly, to the sort of ladette Nineties, where women were supposed to be just like men."
She added: "Now for me, feminism is not about women becoming more like men. It’s not about that.
"It’s about finding our space, enlarging our space, and the ways in which we work in the world in order to balance things out."
