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[...] The subtext--that women are by their nature more reserved, less risk-taking, more responsible--props up the idea that the problem wasn't the economic system, but purely the individuals pulling the levers responsible for plunging most of the globe into a long-reaching recession.

Corporate feminism tells a story that is convenient to capitalism. If personal aspiration is the key to success for women, and emancipation is to be won on an individual basis for you and your hardworking family, then solidarity and the prospect of structural and legal chance becomes a pointless di…

The importance of "aspiration" over equality both focuses on individual success, and in turn attributes failure to individuals, rather than a system designed to promote a few, transferring wealth to the "aspirational" at the expense of many, many others. Rather than admit that life chances, and the…

[...] Sandberg never envisages an image of a woman as anything other than a worker, or a wife and mother. The alpha successful women in Lean In are always bouncing between boardroom and babies, and the Lean Backs are daydreaming about promotions, or longing for the perfect husband and fretting ov…

Ambition is tempered not just by individual whim, but by the codes and messages people pick up on throughout their lives, fractured by gender, class, race, sexuality and levels of disability. Telling women to ignore their inner barometer of their own likely success is hardly a solution. A woman may…