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. That aside, Sandberg believes the ideas embraced by these influencers can be deeply damaging for working mothers, making them feel guilty for being employed 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But there are other harms that await working women as these movements take hold and revive outdated notions about who belongs in leadership roles or in the workforce generally. 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. More than a third said they think women are too emotional for demanding jobs, while 42% expressed the idea that 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 at home to the decline in corporate commitments to diversity, equity, and inclusion. 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 (9 in 10 adults have encountered it in the past year) but that it can be an insidious force even when men don’t agree with what they see. Interestingly, women are less influenced by this content even when they consume it often.
Men who frequently engage with manosphere and tradwife content are three times as likely to share sexist views, according to Lean In. Even men who are not especially receptive to it are twice as likely to agree with the ideas promoted therein.
About 6 in 10 employees surveyed said they have seen these ideas show up in their professional lives, suggesting that the online blowback to feminism is actively influencing how men perceive women in the workplace. Women who said they’ve experienced sexist commentary at work also reported receiving gendered performance feedback, such as 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 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 work settings. 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.”
