Not My Kind of Success
By Megan Hanson
It’s hard to keep all the things I’m supposed to advocate for straight in my head. It feels like an overly complicated seesaw—on one side, being a feminist means supporting women who want to be in high corporate standings, shattering the glass ceiling, and ‘equal pay for equal work!’. But on the other side, you have to balance it with supporting working-class women, advocating for safer work conditions, dismantling the harmful under-regulated capitalist system we live in, and validating the idea that being a stay-at-home parent should be a viable option. There are all these little asides and footnotes and justifications one needs to make in order to be inclusive enough, to be sufficiently intersectional. This is repeated in every single facet of feminism. It gets really overwhelming sometimes; supporting any movement can open doors to the problems that result from its flip-side. I’m sure this is part of the reason people today are often hesitant to subscribe to ‘feminist’ or ‘social justice’ initiatives. With all the back-and-forth about which causes are problematic, especially alongside the pervasive ‘cancel culture’ of the last few years, being outspoken about your support for anything—whether it’s a protest, a piece of media, or a public figure—can feel like asking for criticism.
During my senior year at my all-girls high school, they started a guest speaker program called “Imagine Yourself in the C-Suite”. Every few months a different CEO, CFO, or entrepreneur came in to discuss their journey to success. I always found these presentations off-putting, but I mostly attributed that feeling to the fact that being in a corporate setting is the complete opposite of what I hope to do with my life. After all, the program was founded on feminist ideas, right? Empowering women to achieve high standings and break into male-dominated fields is a Good Thing. But after reading the “Feminist Class Struggle” and “Women at Work” chapters in bell hooks’ book Feminism is for Everybody, I was able to pinpoint why the whole thing felt a bit strange. A lot of the ideology behind the “C-Suite” program goes along with the self-serving brand of white ‘feminism’ that exists to simply incorporate women into the already broken, problematic economic system. It felt less like examples of how opportunities can help women achieve great things, and more like examples of how women can fit themselves into a harmful business framework—and often that assimilation can be simply a veiled method of survival in a sexist world. It seems rather outdated to deem women successful by holding them up to the mainstream, male, corporate standard of success.
I never outwardly expressed my discomfort with the program while in high school, at least not beyond mentioning that I wasn’t interested in finding corporate success. I think my school could do a better job at empowering its student body than just showing us ‘successful’ women. Honestly, I think it would be far more beneficial to have a Women’s and Gender Studies class as a required part of the curriculum. Broader perspectives from women from all sorts of socioeconomic backgrounds have given me much more respect for individual success, and a better understanding of how success manifests itself in real life. I’m sure this kind of knowledge would have a similar effect on my schoolmates as well. Instead of lauding CEOs, I would wholeheartedly support an increased focus on promoting ideas and individuals who create meaningful change through cooperation, self-sustainment, radical feminist nurturing, and dismantling the root causes of oppression. Criticizing the patriarchal system does more good than pointing to the individuals who manage to ‘win’ despite inequity.
hooks, bell, 1952-. Feminism Is for Everybody : Passionate Politics. Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000.