Susan Faludi granskar den framgångsrika rörelsen Lean in med Sheryl Sandberg som ledare:

Länk

From the sounds of recent pronouncements, it might seem that efforts to elevate the woman worker have finally paid off. With giddy triumphalism, books like Hanna Rosin’s The End of Men: And the Rise of Women and Liza Mundy’s The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners Is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family (both published in 2012) celebrate the imminent emergence of a female supremacy. “For the first time in history, the global economy is becoming a place where women are finding more success than men,” Rosin declared, noting that twelve of the fifteen jobs projected to grow the fastest in the United States in the next decade “are occupied primarily by women.” The female worker, she wrote, is “becoming the standard by which success is measured.” Mundy, who called this supremacy the “Big Flip,” predicted that, thanks to the new economy, we would soon be living in a world “where women routinely support households and outearn the men they are married to,” and men “will gladly hitch their wagon to a female star.”

A star like Sheryl Sandberg, whose feminism seems a capstone of female ascendancy. Never mind that the “fastest-growing” future occupations for women—home health aide, child care worker, customer service representative, office clerk, food service worker—are among the lowest paid, most with few to no benefits and little possibility for “advancement.” Progress has stalled for many ordinary women—or gone into reverse. The poverty rate for women, according to the Census Bureau’s latest statistics, is at its highest point since 1993, and the “extreme poverty rate” among women is at the highest point ever recorded.

Faludi vågar diskutera samband mellan klass och kön. Den här kulten av framgångsrika kvinnor riskerar att slå hårt mot andra perspektiv.

But there seems to be little tangible cross-class solidarity coming from the triumphalists, despite their claims to be speaking for all womankind. “If we can succeed in adding more female voices at the highest levels,” Sandberg writes in her book, “we will expand opportunities and extend fairer treatment to all.” But which highest-level voices? When former British prime minister Margaret (“I hate feminism”) Thatcher died, Lean In’s Facebook page paid homage to the Iron Lady and invited its followers to post “which moments were most memorable to you” from Thatcher’s tenure. That invitation inspired a rare outburst of un-“positive” remarks in the comment section, at least from some women in the U.K. “Really??” wrote one. “She was a tyrant. . . . Just because a woman is in a leadership position does not make her worthy of respect, especially if you were on the receiving end of what she did to lots of people.” “So disappointing that Lean In endorses Thatcher as a positive female role model,” wrote another. “She made history as a woman, but went on to use her power to work against the most vulnerable, including women and their children.”

Det är en lång och krävande text. Faludi klär av en rörelse in på bara benen och företrädarna framstår som egoistiska marknadsromantiker. Feminismen har blivit en framgångsteologi.

Frågan är om det finns svenska paralleller?