The End of the Girlboss Is Here

The girlboss didn’t change the system; she thrived within it. Now that system is cracking, and so is this icon of millennial hustle.

Image: Kelly Caminero

Seven years ago, if you were an ambitious young white woman seeking to break through the glass ceiling at work, Sheryl Sandberg was your mentor. Her bestselling 2013 book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead was your guide to overcoming the type-A personality defects — perfectionism, people-pleasing, fear of criticism, self-doubt — holding you back from the C-suite.

Lean In offered a game plan for success in the corporate workplace through the lens of self-improvement. Sandberg never set out to dismantle the system, but to excel inside it. (Which she has: As the COO of Facebook, her net worth is estimated to be $1.7 billion.) If women just leaned in, could we change the system through our own self-motivated behavioral choices? Institutional barriers versus internal barriers is the “ultimate chicken-and-egg situation,” she writes. But “rather than engage in philosophical arguments over which comes first, let’s agree to wage battles on both fronts.”