Sheryl Sandberg, Condoleeza Rice, and the Girl Scouts have joined together in a campaign to ‘ban bossy,’ and they’ve been joined by a growing number of other high-powered women and women’s groups. The campaign targets ‘bossy’ as a gendered slur for opinionated, strong, powerful women and girls, and wants to see the term taken out of circulation; furthermore, it’s arguing that girls can and should be treated as future leaders and shapers of society, pointing to discouragingly low representation of women in leadership across the United States.
This campaign is an example of neoliberal feminism at its best (or worst, depending on how one views these things) and of a completely misguided and backwards attempt at addressing a genuine social issue.
The issue is undeniable. Powerful, assertive, outspoken girls are often put down and suppressed by the society around them. Women and girls are taught to be meek, submissive, and obedient, and those who don’t comply are demonized. The solution, though, is more complex than excising ‘bossy’ from our vocabulary, and it depends on thinking about how we view leadership in society, women and girls, and, of course, the best way to address gendering and the creation of gender roles in society.
It’s odd to see anyone taking advice from Sandberg, author of the now-notorious Lean In, a textbook for neoliberal feminism that draws upon very specific ideas about what it means to be ‘feminist’ and how women can succeed in society. Her feminism is one in which women become strong and successful by stepping up to leadership roles in major corporations and other organizations, in which women are in charge, and in which work and capitalism become the currency of success, independence, and freedom in society.
This is not necessarily the case. Sandberg’s feminism is predicated on a very specific view of society, one not shared by everyone, and it assumes that inequality, oppression, and sexism can be solved within the framework of a system that perpetuates and exacerbates these evils. For Sandberg, the solution to unfair distribution of resources seems to be to lean in, as it were, to the system that controls these resources, to grab her own slice of the pie—she doesn’t propose overthrowing or challenging the system as it stands.
Nor does she question the value and utility of work in society, or demand to know why some kinds of work are more valued than others. In many ways, Lean In is a reminder of older iterations of feminism, in which women fought so hard for recognition in society that they fell into the trap of positioning themselves as ‘one of the boys’ and demanding access to a patriarchal system rather than tearing down the system as one that’s inherently flawed.
‘Ban bossy’ relies on the idea that patriarchy is still an acceptable model for society, and that everyone should aspire to the same capitalist goals that have dominated much of the Western world for centuries. In the framing of this campaign, ‘leadership’ isn’t about fomenting revolutions, destroying the system, and challenging the status quo. Rather, it’s about seamlessly entering the system and asserting the right to be just as destructive, uncaring, and ruthless as the men who currently dominate it. What’s better, women heading Fortune 500 companies, or an abolishment of the system that allows just a handful of people and firms to control the bulk of resources in society?
‘Ban bossy’ would have you think that putting women in charge is the priority, rather than analysing the system that cultivates and perpetuates oppression. It also misses a larger point, caught up as it is in the language wars of modern-day neoliberalism: this isn’t about ‘bossy’ as a word, but something much larger.
While ‘bossy’ is definitely a gendered slur with negative connotations, weaponised primarily against women and girls and intended to be a condemnation (often used when the speaker suspects that language like ‘bitch’ wouldn’t be tolerated), the solution to the aggressive suppression of assertive women and girls isn’t banning a word. New words and dogwhistles will always spring up; we already have ‘bitchy’ and ‘cold,’ but words like ‘driven’ and ‘Type A’ can also become negative and aggressive in a context where the speaker intends to make a sharp comment about a woman’s personality.
Words are weapons, and language matters, but not at the expense of exploring the social attitudes behind it. ‘Ban bossy’ is a simplistic campaign that doesn’t address the core issue, which is that independent, opinionated, strong-minded women are devalued by society and considered, by many, to be abhorrent. The problem isn’t what they’re called, but the fact that they’re hated, feared, and mistrusted in the first place. There’s a reason that so many tropes and stereotypes revolving around strong women exist, and there’s a reason that they’re caricatured, feared, and demonized.
Women can and should be leaders, and the reaction to leadership behaviour in women and girls shouldn’t be fear and hatred. Striking a word off the lexicon used to describe powerful women isn’t going to change the underlying attitudes behind the use of that word.
Society longs to reduce women and girls to servile positions, and by creating a social structure in which being ‘bossy’ is negative, it maintains the gendered assertion that men should remain ‘in charge.’ Being in charge, though, is about more than simply who heads up Congress and who sits on the boards of major corporations. It’s about community-level interactions, it’s about the interplay between individuals, and it’s about the way society itself is structured.
You don’t need capitalism to have social equality, as ‘ban bossy’ seems to insist, but you do need a world in which people of all genders are invited to contribute their opinions, skills, and leadership to society. ‘Ban bossy’ doesn’t address these fundamental issues, or provide a framework for community-building based on something outside neoliberal structures and interpretations of society.
Support from the Girl Scouts is particularly disheartening, as the organization has a long and proud history of empowering girls and contributing to the development of strong women. The group has played a key role in the lives of so many women and girls who have benefited from its push for social equality and a more egalitarian world that to see it promoting capitalist notions of ‘freedom’ is deeply disappointing. If I hadn’t already eaten them, I’d ask for a refund on my Thin Mints.