Corporate Feminism

Corporate feminism is a movement lead by mostly "wealthy, white, highly educated women" who wish to add more women to the corporate workplace (corporate feminism). In fact, there's even a statue dedicated to the "lack of women on corporate boards" on Wall Street (Cauterucci). At first, you might ask, what's wrong with that? Surely motivating women to assume powerful positions in this country can't be a bad thing. It seems like a perfectly decent promotion of gender equality.

Here's why it's not. For one thing, business leaders are an extreme minority in comparison to the population of women. Realistically, becoming a higher-up would only benefit a couple thousand people, and it would be very difficult to achieve that position without an upper- or middle-class upbringing. That leaves millions struggling with basic issues, which form the focus of the bulk of the rest of the feminist movement. But even in the business world, there are much bigger fish to fry, such as the "cuts to legal aid that disproportionately affect women" (corporate feminism). As I mentioned earlier, supporters of corporate feminism are usually women who already find themselves in positions of power, but perhaps make less than their male coworkers. Obviously, fighting for equality for yourself and a small percentage of women when you make $200,000 a year isn't as impactful as pushing for more labor equality overall, especially when women are "over-represented in the low-paid service industries" (corporate feminism). Furthermore, as Livingston states, this form of feminism hints that "the appearance of women in a space currently dominated by men is a success in and of itself" (corporate feminism). Overall, the movement simply ignores the much larger issues at hand.