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A decade on from Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, what can we learn from the fall of the Girl Boss?
3 years ago
2 min read
When Lean In was published in 2013, it became a powerful manifesto for ambitious women and birthed a generation of ‘Girl Bosses’. A decade on, Stylist reflects on the era’s false promises.
This month marks a decade since Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In: Women, Work, And The Will To Lead topped bestseller lists. In it, Sandberg and her co-author, Nell Scovell, offered a manual for navigating a male-dominated business landscape, just as Sandberg had, going from Harvard to the World Bank, working as the chief of staff for the treasury secretary under Bill Clinton, then joining Google. When the book was published, Sandberg had a reported worth of $500 million (£417m), in large part thanks to her shares at Facebook, where she was working as COO and had recently become the first woman appointed to the board of directors.
Sandberg was uber-successful, confident and powerful: the archetypal career woman. She roped Beyoncé in as a spokesperson for her Ban Bossy media campaign in 2014, aiming to change the way that society views women in business; she gave keynote speeches at universities across America, a role model for all graduates, but women in particular. In fact, it was the huge response to her 2010 TED talk – The ways women are held back—and the way we hold ourselves back – that inspired her to write a book on the subject and encourage women to stop holding back, and lean in.
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