Corporate Female Empowerment – In mid-2010 women’s

In mid-2010, women’s leadership built a thin bridge: on the one hand, the reality of the social crisis and the stagnation of wage growth that hit young people in the labour market after the Great Recession and, on the other hand, the distant world of predictable business success promised these women a career as their mothers. When a country faces massive loss of life, racist violence from the state, unemployment and the possible homelessness of millions of people, it is inevitably clear that when women focus their worldview on the hectic nature of their own offices, they simply recreate power structures built by men but with the comfort of women on top. Transforming women into new businessmen will never be enough to combat racism and systemic sexism, the erosion of labour rights, or the accumulation of wealth in the hands of several million people in the country – the massive abuses of power that poison the daily lives of most people. Women remain human which means that we can equally respond to the incentives and privileges of power that sometimes turn male bosses into tyrants, bullies or fortune hunters. Including women, most of whom are white, in the power structures usually occupied by men does not actually change employment, let alone peace, for the better if the structures themselves remain intact. But it was the assumption of this difference between women and men that made female bosses marketable to those who could sponsor their company: if these women could succeed in defending feminist values and treating their workers humanely, then perhaps patriarchy was simply an option that smart consumers could consider. For rich white women at the beginning of the millennium who wanted to be true daughters of patriarchy, their special ambitions were appropriate at a time when this concept was flourishing. With all the attention paid to the alleged wrongdoing of women managers and entrepreneurs, it is easy to feel that they were disproportionately attacked by the things that men in their position always did or that people were a little too happy about their deaths. In the past, when Anna Wintour or Arianna Huffington reached the top, the abuse that “she” widely reported to “her” colleagues was dismissed for decades as an unsuccessful but necessary by-product of brilliant leadership, an indicator that women harden to shine in the world of men. For some young women inspired by this concept, this statement may seem like a vote of confidence. This form of empowerment was successful for a short time precisely because people began to understand better how power works in America – and they were not happy with it. Instead of disassembling the power that men in America had long enjoyed, career women could simply claim it in the office.