Dek: The latest data from Sheryl Sandberg’s feminist organization reveals that six in 10 employees have heard sexist views at work shaped by manosphere and tradewife content.
For a while now, Sheryl Sandberg has drawn attention to the cultural shift embodied by the rise of tradwife and manosphere content. “The problem with the romanticized vision of the tradwife is that it signals to women that to be a good wife, partner, or mother, you have to do it full-time,” she wrote online in March.
The reality is most women can’t afford not to work outside the home. That aside, Sandberg believes the ideas embraced by these influencers can be deeply damaging for working mothers, making them feel guilty for working outside the home or harboring any ambition. “I’m worried that the glamorization of the tradwife trend risks putting that guilt back into women—guilt that many of us have worked long and hard to shed,” Sandberg added in her post.
But there are other harms that await working women as these movements take hold and revive outdated notions about who belongs in leadership roles or in the workforce. New research from Sandberg’s feminist organization Lean In reveals that the amorphous collection of male podcasters and influencers who comprise the manosphere have promoted ideas that are now seeping into the workplace. Nearly half of the men surveyed by Lean In argued that men should be the primary earners for their families. Over a third of men think women are too emotional for demanding jobs, while 42% say men are a better fit for leadership roles.
These aren’t new beliefs, but Lean In is making a connection between the surge in conservative and outright sexist viewpoints across the internet and its impact on the workplace, where women have notched hard-won gains over the last half century. There is no shortage of challenges that persist for working women, from a disproportionate share of caregiving responsibilities to the decline in corporate commitments to DEI. Women are still woefully underrepresented in the highest echelons of corporate America, and the gender pay gap remains stubbornly entrenched.
Lean In’s research indicates that manosphere and tradwife content is not only becoming ubiquitous—nine in 10 adults have encountered it in the last year—but that it can be an insidious force even when men don’t agree with what they see. (Women are less affected by this content even when they consume it often.)
Men who come across that content are three times as likely to share sexist views, and even men who are not especially receptive to any of that content are twice as likely to agree with the ideas promoted therein. About six in 10 employees have seen these ideas show up in the workplace, suggesting that the online blowback to feminism is actively influencing how men perceive women in the workplace. The women who are privy to sexist commentary at work also find that they receive gendered feedback about being seen as too emotional or lacking leadership qualities.
As Fast Company has reported, elements of the manosphere are spilling into the workplace in a number of different ways. Some HR leaders have found that terms like “alphas” and “betas,” used to categorize men according to stereotypical ideas of masculinity, are now making their way into a work setting. Terms that might seem more innocuous, from “alpha leadership” to “body count” in the context of layoffs, are slowly becoming more common on platforms like LinkedIn. Prominent leaders like Mark Zuckerberg have openly talked about bringing “masculine energy” back into the workplace, and that the corporate world had been “culturally neutered” by DEI programs—a perspective he aired on Joe Rogan’s wildly popular podcast. (Sandberg, of course, famously spent 14 years as Meta’s COO and played a major role in shaping the company’s culture.)
Lean In urges senior leaders—especially men—to “call out sexism” and “model fairness in hiring, raises, promotions, and performance reviews.” But it’s hard to believe individual leaders can and will model this behavior when, for years now, corporate America has chipped away at the very initiatives that were designed to address these issues. Even employers that have stood by their DEI programs are much less inclined to talk about those efforts openly.
The more salient advice might be what Lean In offers to working women: “Keep receipts.”
