So Elizabeth Holmes finally went to jail, with the former Theranos CEO recently starting her 11-year jail term for fraud and conspiracy.
“The crux of the Girlboss movement’s problem is that it wants women to behave more like men and the answer is for men to behave more like women at scale.”
Holmes’ conviction and detention cap off a recent run of a certain type of prominent women leaders that received a lot of media attention for being prominent women leaders before being hoisted by their own petards.
So maybe now is a good time to talk about the death of the Girlboss.
And to do that, we have entrepreneur, author, and CEO of The Financial Diet, Chelsea Fagan.
Chelsea and TFD have been on the problem of the Girlboss for some time, identifying it as a superficial and cynical branding exercise that allowed certain types of women to assimilate into our existing power structures without changing them.
But that’s not the only reason the term fell out of favour, and it’s certainly not this podcast’s conviction that Girlbossery represents the full spectrum of women entrepreneurs. Far from it.
There is a trap women leaders face regardless of their behaviour, with their actions and very existence defined by and compared to some male ideal—an ideal that frankly allows most men in tech to act like plum fools without repercussion or introspection.
Anyone got tickets for the Zuck / Elon cage fight yet?
Now there’s more to this conversation that we didn’t get to, unpacking the other difficulties women founders face, like the lack of access to capital—things we’ve discussed on past podcasts and will discuss in future podcasts.
Why? Chelsea had to go to an event for her new book (A Perfect Vintage, available for purchase today) and some technical difficulties cut short our recording time.
That’s OK, because before she had to dip Chelsea left us with a wonderful example of positive entrepreneurial leadership—how she approaches running her business—and a promise to return in future episodes.
So, after a moment of silence for the Girlboss, let’s dig in.
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The BetaKit Podcast is hosted by Douglas Soltys & Rob Kenedi. Edited by Kattie Laur. Recorded at StartWell. Sponsored by Palette Skills.