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This past week, Sheryl Sandberg and her organization, Lean In, launched a new campaign aimed at empowering girls of all ages to become leaders. The Girl Scouts of America, Beyoncé, former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, Jennifer Garner, and many more have already backed the “Ban Bossy” campaign.
The idea behind the campaign, according to Sandberg in an interview with ABC News, is to “help girls and women feel more confident and comfortable as leaders.”
Sandberg said, “Women do 66 percent of the work in the world. Women produce 50 percent of the food. Women make 10 percent of the income and women own 1 percent of the property. We are 50 percent of the population. We are 5 percent of the Fortune 500 CEOs. We are 17 percent of the board seats. We are 19 percent of Congress. That’s not enough for 50 percent of the population. We live in a world that is overwhelmingly run and owned by men.”
She makes a very valid point here, and the idea behind the campaign is excellent. We do have a gender imbalance among leaders of all kinds. That problem is not the word “bossy,” though.
As a woman, jumping on this campaign’s bandwagon as a postgrad would be too easy. By aiming simply to “ban bossy,” this campaign essentially points the finger and blames external circumstances and instances for why women don’t make up more of our national, world, and industry leaders. It says it’s someone else’s fault for why we, collectively, haven’t even made a dent in achieving our dreams and aspirations.
“Bossy” is one of those words that has a negative connotation simply because previous generations have made it so. Other words, like “geek,” “nerd,” and even “gay” to a point have undergone cultural shifts, which have made them more widely embraced and less of a stigma. The more effective way to combat the gender gap and empower girls and women to take on more active leadership roles would be to embrace being bossy and cause a cultural shift.
By embracing being bossy–the way many women have publicly done in the past week through a number of public outlets–we take responsibility for making our dreams happen. Banning bossy, instead of owning up to what we each are, shifts the blame and tells girls that they should have leadership aspirations. This isn’t always the case. Some girls and women have dreams of being a stay-at-home mom and running the PTA, not running a fortune 500 company or the world.
“Ban Bossy” may have a great idea behind it, and I’m all for empowering girls and women all over the world to follow their own dreams, but banning a single word isn’t the right way to do it. Encouraging ladies and men alike to embrace their individuality will do a better job of empowering everyone to achieve greatness. There are plenty of double standards for women already, and this type of feminism–the kind that only empowers one set of people rather than expanding rights for everyone–is just another one that shouldn’t see the light of day any longer.
I’m bossy, so what?
Respond
@robyn_rl
@robynrl
It is bad that I had that terrible rap song “I’m bossy” stuck in my head while I read the entire column?
So I have to say it’s much more complicated than you (and the both sides of the campaign) are making it out to be. Language has a HUGE influence on how we perceive one another, even from a young age. The words seems inane enough, but the use of it no doubt affects other’s perceptions of the target. When it comes to women and leadership, there’s this thing called the backlash effect. Essentially, this quote from an empirical article published in 01 explains it better than I can: “Specifically, agentic women are viewed as socially deficient, compared with identically presented men, which may result in hiring discrimination (Rudman, 1998; Rudman & Glick, 1999). Thus, women who strive for leadership positions are in a
double bind: They can enact communal behaviors and be liked but not respected or enact agentic behaviors and be respected but not liked. In either case, they risk being disqualified for leadership roles.” For women in (most) positions of leadership, you cannot be perceived as both competent and well-liked. So calling someone bossy could indicated that yeah, they’re a ‘leader’ but this isn’t the role you as a woman should (prescriptive norms) be playing. People should like you. It’s more important for women to be liked as opposed to men because of these norms, and the stereotype that women are ‘inherently nicer’ is yet another example of descriptive gender (what women stereotypically are like) norms and until these change, the inequality in perception and treatment in a professional environment won’t change. AKA the use of a word like bossy may have more of an adverse effect on women seeking leadership positions than it appears.
http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/0022-4537.00239/abstract?deniedAccessCustomisedMessage=&userIsAuthenticated=false – sorry it’s only the abstract, had a copy from a class but I’m sure it’s not too hard to find an open access version of the article.
Banning words, however, is a bit ‘bossy’ in itself though, isn’t it?
Not that I would ever hit a woman, but I desperately want to slap the lady in this column’s picture. I think the word bitchy comes to mind more than bossy.
“Other words, like “geek,” “nerd,” and even “gay” to a point…”
girl…no.
“Some girls and women have dreams of being a stay-at-home mom and running the PTA, not running a fortune 500 company or the world.”
these girls can be called “bossy” too. i don’t really get the correlation that if the campaign empowers girls to be business-minded leaders then it dis-empowers girls to be stay at home moms. if you aspire to run the PTA, isn’t that aspiring to be a leader too? and a small part of me also wants to point out that women have been told forever that it’s cool for us to be stay at home moms but only recently have we been told we can be leaders, especially in the business/political world so it’s nice to hear that as someone who definitely doesn’t aspire to be a stay-at-home mom.
I agree with reclaiming the word as opposed to banning it, however, it is still going to have negative linguistic power when used by a privileged group as an insult to someone of a disenfranchised group. The focus should be on education on words, their connotations, and social inequalities.
Nothing says “confident leader” like whining about a gender-neutral adjective.
not even the tiniest bit gender neutral. I don’t believe for a second you’ve ever heard a boy/man referred to as bossy.
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DAMMIT. Anyways, I applaud this work!