Name: Lean Out
ISBN: 9781910924037

Dawn Foster

Sheryl Sandberg’s business advice book, Lean In, was heralded as a defining moment in attitudes to women in business. But for all its commercial success, it proposed a model of feminism that was individualistic and unthreatening to capital.

Dawn Foster asks: If one percent are leaning in, what are the other 99% supposed to do?

Lean Out

Sheryl Sandberg's business advice book, Lean In, was heralded as a defining moment in attitudes to women in business. But for all its commercial success, it proposed a model of feminism that was individualistic and unthreatening to capital. In her powerful debut work Lean Out, acclaimed journalist Dawn Foster unpicks how the purportedly feminist message of Sandberg's book neatly exempts patriarchy, capitalism and business from any responsibility for changing the position of women in contemporary culture. It looks at the rise of a corporate '1% feminism', and at how feminism has been defanged and depoliticised at a time when women have borne the brunt of the financial crash and the gap between rich and poor is widening faster than ever. Surveying business, media, culture and politics, Foster asks whether this 'trickledown' feminism offers any material gain for women collectively, or acts as mere window-dressing PR for the corporations who caused the financial crash. She concludes that 'leaning out' of the corporate model is a more effective way of securing change than leaning in.

Hidde

‘Trickle down feminism’ doesn't work, shows Dawn Foster in this clever, short book. People like Sheryl Sandberg (‘Lean in’), Theresa May and Margaret Thatcher may have had positions of leadership, but as part of the 1%, they did not help the feminist case. More meaningful feminism, Foster proposes. is to lean out and effectively fight the systems that hurt the poor.

Lean Out Dawn Foster asks: If one percent are leaning in, what are the other 99% supposed to do?

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