Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Sen. Bernie Sanders wants women to stop paying for contraceptives that should be free, woman-founded Waabi raises $200 million for autonomous trucks, and author Samhita Mukhopadhyay reckons with what comes after the girlboss in an excerpt from her new book, The Myth of Making It. Have a thoughtful Juneteenth.
- After the girlboss. It’s easy to say the girlboss is dead. The term, originally coined by entrepreneur Sophia Amoruso, certainly is. It faced a reckoning in 2020, when a sprinkling of stories alleging toxic workplaces and racist behavior in women-led, mission-driven startups turned into a wave of high-profile exoduses from these companies including the Wing founder Audrey Gelman, Reformation founder Yael Aflalo, and Refinery29 founder Christene Barberich.
But is that the whole story? With the girlboss backlash, it felt like young women, heretofore encouraged to give in to unfettered ambition, were now being chastised for wanting to get ahead. Women in my life started to whisper about how some of the callouts, while justified, also felt unfairly targeted—more at the women’s ambition than at how they implemented it. “Why should I hide that I work hard?” said one. “I hope no one is ever interviewed about my management,” a former coworker said to me.
