Is This The End Of The Girl Boss?

The past 12 months have seen myriad female leaders step down following a series of very public reckonings over accusations of toxic workplace cultures. The deserved consequence of their own failings? Or proof that we still hold women in power to impossibly high standards?

- Anna Fielding

There were mutterings, even in the glory days, but the party was too loud for them to really be heard. Suddenly the startup world was female-led, female-friendly, female-focused. After years of looking fruitlessly, furiously, at the unsmashed glass ceiling, women in business decided to paint it pink instead.

The Wing opened its first all-female members’ club space in Manhattan in 2016, growing to 11 locations serving 10,000 members in the US and the UK. If you were visiting The Wing, you could wear your dress from Reformation, fresh from its 2012 relaunch, singing sweetly about its ethical manufacturing practices. That dress was possibly first spotted on one of many female-focused websites that blended fashion with feminism and mental health advice – Refinery29 and ManRepeller among them. An Away suitcase, debuted in 2016, provided something to pack it all up in.

Each of those companies had a charismatic female founder. Even if you weren’t a customer, these women were suddenly everywhere, styled and smiling and telling their success stories. The naysayers mostly focused on price: these websites were free to read, but everything else required a significant disposable income. Was it really inclusive? But these comments were eclipsed by the overall rosy glow. Here was the representation we’d all been clamouring for.

It was the “golden age for women in power”, The Wing founder Audrey Gelman told The Washington Post of the moment the company launched its first space, when it still looked like Hillary Clinton would be the 45th US president.