Enough with the womans plaining
Epithets like ‘girl boss’ abound for strong women – it’s time we shut them down, says Fiona Cowood
WHEN IT WAS announced last month that Netflix series Girlboss had been axed, I did a happy sigh. Not because I have anything against the Sofia Amorusoinspired show – I haven’t yet watched it – but because I’ll no longer have to see this maddening moniker in my nightly Netflix scroll. God, the word rankles. It’s top of a list that includes arch offenders Mumboss, Mumpreneur, Pinkboss, Ladyboss, SHE-E-O and – shudder – Bossbabe. If you’re not on Instagram, you may have been spared daily contact with all of the above but, believe me, their currency is strong. A search for #girlboss returns more than six and a half million images. It goes without saying that #boyboss brings up fewer than 3,000.
I have no doubt good intentions lurk behind these new additions to the lexicon. The female workforce has had a rubbish deal. Our ability to bear children has been used as a weapon to keep us down – underestimated and underpaid for two millennia. For many, this is a proud moment of fightback. I’m just not convinced that putting our gender front and centre is the celebratory flag in the sand some people think it is. It feels like a disclaimer. It screams, ‘Look, I’ve done this, despite being a woman! Despite owning a uterus, I’ve written a business plan!’ The case we’ve all been arguing, surely, is that these two things – the business plan and the uterus – are unrelated. Why are we bubblewrapping our achievements in the language of ‘girls’ and ‘babes’ and ‘pink’? And what next – Lawyerbabe? Girlsurgeon?
It hurts most that having been infantilised and patronised at the hands of patriarchal bosses, we are now doing this to ourselves. Prefixing the word ‘boss’ with ‘girl’ or ‘mum’ only reinforces the idea that, in the main, bosses are male. It keeps women in a ‘weird’ space reserved for exceptions. It also begs the question, when did the word ‘woman’ lose its cool?
The fact is, well over half of UK entrepreneurs under 35 are now female – that’s a lot of guts, self-belief and hard work that needs shouting about. Reducing these achievements to a mug-friendly catchphrase belittles them. When future historians look back on the explosion of influencers and social media, I’m convinced they’ll be baffled by this obsession with cutesy self-labelling and need to ‘womansplain’. ‘So, Sheryl Sandberg…’ they’ll ponder, ‘Was she an activist, an author and COO of Facebook? Or was she a #mumbosswhoslays?’ I think I know which she’d choose. What do you think? Let us know at feedback@graziamagazine.co.uk