The idea that women deserve success only if they are also good, kind, nurturing people who put everyone else first is, of course, a sexist one. What happened here is that what started as a feminist observation has overthought itself into old-fashioned misogyny. (Men, we should remind ourselves, are not ridiculed as "boybosses".)
The feminist writer Moira Donegan has pointed out that the trajectory of the girlboss has similarities with the phenomenon chronicled by Susan Faludi in Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women - the demonetisation of career women as lonely, unhappy and unlikely to get married. What started as a feminist observation has overthought itself into old-fashioned misogyny They were not self-made as they claimed, they were unwitting products of "benevolent sexism". To address the distasteful problem of overconfident or entitled women, girlboss took on a ridiculing quality too: these women did not have as much power as they thought (after all, how could a woman really have power in a man’s world?). The derogatory term "Karen" once usefully described a particular type of racist white woman but can now be freely directed at any middle-aged woman with a particular haircut. Soon, girlboss was a repurposed insult that could be directed at any entitled-seeming woman with ambitions in the corporate world or who had a particular aesthetic (suit, heels, manicure). Even worse, like men, they had the temerity to want success in systems and workplaces that weren’t fair to everyone and yet, like men, sometimes showed little interest in solving these wider problems.īad female chief executives, such as Holmes, started to be seen not merely as bad people but as a reflection on the whole idea of championing women in business. It was noted that they were not always feminists, although they tended to say they were, and that they were not always "good" or "nice". Girlbosses themselves - successful or ambitious women, in other words - became objects of hate. There is far more to do.īut this general observation soon grew into something more target-specific, which is where it started to go wrong.
GATEKEEP GASLIGHT GIRLBOSS HOW TO
Feminists correctly pointed out that a few women learning how to climb the ranks at the top of the corporate world doesn’t solve the big structural problems of patriarchy. It at least started with a good observation.
We should note that there is some merit to the backlash against girlbosses and the wider "lean in" project. There is a fad for girlboss villains on screen: "unfeminist" Shiv Roy in Succession ("What were you doing, brunching with some other sock-puppet girlboss presidents?" her brother Roman mocks her at one point) the psychopathic but well-dressed heroine of the film I Care a Lot. There is a current Edinburgh show called Gaslight, Gatekeep, Girlboss and a forthcoming book by the same name. The strength and scale of the backlash is such that it is still going three years later. Elizabeth Holmes, the fraudulent chief executive of Theranos, is perhaps the quintessential girlboss.īad female chief executives started to be seen as a reflection on the whole idea of championing women in business. The founder of The Wing, a "feminist" workspace business that turned out to be riddled with toxic practices, is a girlboss. Girlboss became an insult, used to belittle and accuse a type of manicured woman who pursues success at the expense of others. Then, as leaning in went out of fashion, around 2019, feminists changed their minds. It cheered on the rugged individualist making it in a man’s world through "moxie" and "hustle". Girlboss originated around 2014 as an approving description of the type of success epitomised by Sheryl Sandberg’s "lean in" approach. It traces the rise and fall of a particular movement in feminism. Once it was the term "career woman", which translated female ambition as selfish, immoral and slightly ridiculous now, "girlboss" does the job. What's the difference between a girlboss and a career woman? The simplest answer, perhaps, is time. PHOTO: GETTY IMAGESEven feminists seem to expect women who succeed in a man’s world to be caring too, writes Martha Gill. The term girlboss traces the rise and fall of a particular movement in feminism.
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