How Lean In Feminism Created Elizabeth Holmes and the Toxic Ladyboss

The ascent of the Ladyboss stems from the popularization of what has been referred to as Lean-In Feminism, inspired by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg s Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. When it was first published in 2013, Lean In was widely lauded for advocating that women lean in in the workplace to achieve professional empowerment and success; it has since been roundly criticized for promoting a sanitized, corporate-backed view of female empowerment in which women must abide by the rules of the game as set by wealthy white men to achieve career advancement. The book has also been slammed for ignoring many of the structural barriers in place preventing low-income women or women of color from being hired in leadership roles. Subsequent reports of Sandberg s unethical leadership at Facebook have further contributed to our retrospective understanding that she may be far from the feminist working woman heroine we had hoped for.

Yet since Lean In feminism entered the popular zeitgeist, it has given rise to a cottage industry of rah-rah girl-power messaging, all of which promotes the message that women can do and be and achieve anything, provided the system is already stacked in your favor to begin with: Ivanka Trump s Women Who Work, the Netflix TV series Girlboss, Rachel Hollis s Girl, Wash Your Face, gynecology startups with sky-high copays, wildly expensive millennial pink co-working spaces,and brands without maternity leave policies tweeting about #InternationalWomensDay It has also given rise to the idea that women in power are unimpeachable and immune to feminist critique, simply by virtue of the fact that they have achieved such high positions, as evidenced by Amy Klobuchar s 2020 presidential campaign and its defenders, or Sarah Sanders assertion that any feminist who did not support first female CIA director Gina Haspel was a hypocrite.

And more than arguably anything else, Lean In feminism also gave rise to Elizabeth Holmes.

via getpocket.com