Estimated reading time: 5 minutes
In this article, Holly Southwick analyses the “girlboss” label for what it is: a tool to make women feel that the system’s not the problem, they are.
The term girlboss was coined by Sophia Amoruso in the early 2010s, at a moment when feminism was being repackaged for the marketplace. It promised something deceptively simple: that women could succeed on the same terms as men, if they were confident enough, resilient enough, and prepared to work hard enough.
But what girlboss really offered was not empowerment, it was damage control.
It emerged at the exact point women were entering workplaces still built by, and for, men. Rather than dismantling the barriers that excluded women from power, girlboss culture reframed survival within those systems as success. Structural inequality became a personal branding opportunity.
Women weren’t told the system was broken. They were told they were broken if they couldn’t handle the system.
From the start, girlboss culture celebrated exceptionalism. Women who succeeded were framed as rule-breakers, disruptors, outliers; proof that the system worked after all. The implication was clear: if one woman could make it, others simply hadn’t tried hard enough.
This logic neatly sidestepped persistent inequality. In the UK, women continue to earn less than men across almost every sector. According to the Office for National Statistics, the gender pay gap remains entrenched, particularly for women over 40, when caring responsibilities and limited options for career progression collide. Research from Young Women’s Trust shows that young women face an income gap from the very start of their working lives, a disadvantage that compounds over time.
Girlboss culture didn’t challenge this. It personalised it.
Rather than asking why women were underpaid, overworked, and underrepresented in leadership, the focus shifted to how women could adapt themselves to survive those conditions. Long hours became ambition. Burnout became passion. Emotional labour became leadership.
Women were praised not for being treated equally but for enduring inequality gracefully.
Men have always been allowed to “walk into” power. Their competence is assumed, and their authority deemed unremarkable. Women, by contrast, are framed as novelties. When they reach senior roles, they are celebrated as inspirational – a word that quietly signals exception rather than norm.
This is where girlboss becomes politically useful. It recasts inequality as motivation. It suggests that what women face is not systemic exclusion but a test of character.
As one critique in The Guardian put it, girlboss quickly shifted from role model to sexist put-down, a way of praising women while refusing to confront why their success remains so rare.
By celebrating individual triumphs, institutions absolve themselves of responsibility. The problem is no longer the workplace; it is women’s confidence, mindset, or resilience.
More recently, girlboss has fallen out of fashion, replaced by a wave of cultural backlash. On-screen, powerful women are increasingly portrayed as tyrannical, emotionally unstable, or morally compromised. As analyses by BBC Culture have noted, high-achieving women in film and television are frequently demonised in ways their male counterparts are not. Take for example Siobhan ‘Shiv’ Roy from Succession, whilst she is a prime example of a high-achieving individual she is positioned very differently to her brothers who are just as successful and ambitious who on the contrary are positioned as ‘damaged’ or ‘tragic’. The difference creates a feeling for the viewer that they should pity the male characters and champion their wins, whilst simultaneously resenting Shiv for wanting the same things.
But this backlash doesn’t contradict girlboss culture, it completes it.
First, women are told to embody masculine workplace norms to succeed. Then, when they do, they are punished for it. Assertiveness becomes aggression. Authority becomes coldness. Ambition becomes pathology.
The message remains consistent: women are allowed proximity to power, but never comfort within it.
Perhaps the most insidious legacy of girlboss culture is what it helped institutions avoid talking about altogether.
It allowed employers to celebrate female success stories without addressing pay gaps. It allowed media narratives of empowerment to flourish alongside stagnant leadership demographics. It allowed inequality to persist under the guise of progress.
By celebrating the girlboss, we quietly accepted the conditions that made her necessary.
Women were never failing to lean in. They were navigating workplaces that demanded more from them for less reward, and then applauded them for surviving it.
If feminism is reduced to branding, it stops being political. Girlboss asked women to adapt to broken systems rather than demand they be fixed. It promised empowerment while leaving power untouched.
The question now is not whether girlboss was cringe or outdated. It’s whether we are ready to stop mistaking individual endurance for collective progress.
Anderson, Hephzibah. (2020) The advert that triggered a debate about “girl boss”, BBC Worklife, 27 January. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/worklife/article/20200127-the-advert-that-triggered-a-debate-about-girl-boss.
Elissa (2025) Why I never want to hear about girlbosses, Substack, 25 July. Available at: https://elissa.substack.com/p/why-i-never-want-to-hear-about-girlbosses.
Wynn, Eva. (2024) Individual Success is Not Liberation, Concept, 20 June. Available at https://concept.journals.villanova.edu/article/view/2958.
Laura Martin. (2022) Girlbosses: The women being demonised on screen, BBC, 8 August. Available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20220805-girlbosses-the-women-being-demonised-on-screen
Lewis, Helen. (2014) #GIRLBOSS by Sophia Amoruso – review, The Guardian, 4 June. Available at: https://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/jun/04/girlboss-sophia-amoruso-review.
Martin, Laura. (2022) Girlbosses: the women being demonised on screen, BBC Culture, 5 August. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/culture/article/20220805-girlbosses-the-women-being-demonised-on-screen.
Office for National Statistics (2025) Gender pay gap in the UK, ONS Bulletin. Available at: https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peopleinwork/earningsandworkinghours/bulletins/genderpaygapintheuk/2025.
Young Women’s Trust (2023) The income gap: the scale and causes of pay inequality for young women in the UK, Young Women’s Trust, 21 June. Available at: https://www.youngwomenstrust.org/our-research/the-income-gap/.
Holly Southwick is a journalism graduate based in Edinburgh with a strong interest in politics and the power of policy to drive meaningful change.
Her work focuses on making political debates and government decisions accessible to those who want to engage but don’t know where to begin. She writes a twice-weekly newsletter breaking down policies and political campaigns in clear, digestible terms.
You can find Holly on the following platforms:
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