Is it the end of the #GirlBoss era in Australia? That wouldn’t be all bad

The 1980s were a bruising decade for feminism, well documented in Susan Faludi’s Backlash, which gave the phenomenon a name. Girl Power, Lean In and later the #GirlBoss offered a way forward, an opportunity to rebrand feminism and entice the next generation, in theory at least, back to the barricades.

All were “like” feminism, but not really feminism at all. They didn’t interrogate the power dynamics between the sexes, examine the structures in which those dynamics operate, ask the hard questions about privilege, class and race, and who gets to benefit from the “power” in a deeply classist and racist society – and who doesn’t. All the solutions could be individual. Through sheer will and individual self-empowerment, decades of gender inequality could be reversed.

Events of the past few years here in Australia – the pandemic that disproportionately affected women, the elevation of child sexual abuse survivor Grace Tame to Australian of the Year and, just this week, the ABC’s shocking investigation into Aboriginal women’s disappearances and deaths – have exposed the fragile foundations of women’s economic security and safety, a fragility that “empowerment feminism” did little to shore up.

And, it must be said, clearly failed some far more than others.

Attending expensive, exclusive (or at least not obviously inclusive) “women’s networking events” may be entertaining – and perhaps some individual women took away tips that helped them personally.

But it is clear now, and arguably should always have been, that it does little for the collective good.

Over the past decade, as this method of “manifesting” one’s feminism remained dominant, Australia dropped from 15th out of 153 countries – when the World Economic Forum first published its Global Gender Gap index in 2006 – to 50th in 2021.

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In Business Chicks promotional material, founder Emma Isaacs says, “I have been lucky enough to work with some extraordinary people … but you make your own luck, right?” As I read that sentence from a 2022 vantage point, I couldn’t help but wonder: what about the women for whom discrimination, racism, ableism, homophobia, religious discrimination, class disadvantage and structural barriers will always be roadblocks to self-conjured “luck”.

Isaacs said this week she was scaling down to “keep the brand alive” and “I remain 100 per cent committed to ensuring the survival of Business Chicks”.

I know I am a hard marker and somewhat unforgiving. I appreciate that some had good intentions and genuinely believed in the “empowerment feminism” they subscribed to and marketed to others. It was so pervasive, so alluring … and so profitable.

But I am not sorry that we are now having a long-overdue conversation about the women for whom Australia is not a “lucky country” – and the fact that not everyone can “make their own luck” unless we actively, collectively remove the barriers.

It is, indeed, the end of an era and, I hope, the start of a new one.