The Wall Street Journal had a really interesting story yesterday about the current state of Lean In. There’s some news on an organizational overhaul—cuts to a quarter of the nonprofit’s staff and a new CEO (Bridget Griswold, a 25-year-old whose background is in AI).
But what caught my attention was the WSJ‘s take on where Sheryl Sandberg is taking Lean In next. What started as a movement encouraging women to pursue ambitious careers is now positioning itself as the counterpoint to the rise of tradwives and the manosphere, the Journal reports. For those who aren’t on social media, these two separate, but related, trends have grown significantly in popularity over the past year. With Trump’s return to office and DEI backlash, a certain segment of men in power have embraced a form of hyper-aggressive manhood. And it has seeped into the business world too (witness Sandberg’s former colleague Mark Zuckerberg’s much-maligned comments a year ago that companies need more “masculine energy.”) It’s a problem.
The rise of tradwives has paralleled this. These are the women glamorizing homemaking on social media—but earning big bucks doing so, making them the breadwinners for their families. Some critics say their content makes taking care of a family full-time seem like a breeze rather than the hard work it is, usually with little acknowledgment of the long-term financial and personal trade-offs. Then there’s a more general fatigue among women that corporate America is not working for them anymore, as seen in Lean In’s own data, which found late last year that fewer women are now aiming to be promoted at work.
Hints of this new direction for Lean In started appearing over the past few weeks. On March 10, Sandberg gave an interview to People magazine, where she said, “The message that is going out is that in order to be a good wife or a good mother, you need to do it full time. And the truth is that that is a decision almost no women can afford to make.” The next week, she wrote a blog post about the same topic. She’s emphasized that while TikTok may make tradwives seem trendy, it’s not a new idea—far from it.
I spoke to a Lean In spokesperson, who added some detail to what this means in practice—and the connection between a young, AI-forward CEO and this mission. Lean In is planning to continue the work it’s best known for (membership circles for women, a large annual study on women in the workplace) but is looking to use technology to produce more “of-the-moment” research. And what’s more of the moment than tradwives on TikTok?
I think that Lean In and Sandberg face some headwinds fighting back against these cultural tides. For women attracted to tradwife life, Lean In represents everything they are rejecting. Sandberg has a powerful voice, but will she be able to reach the women who have already turned their backs on everything she stands for? To be clear, Sandberg is not going after women who stay at home but saying the problem is when women are “weighed down by outdated norms” when making that choice. Still, I’m curious to see how that message lands. (And on the manosphere: God knows those men aren’t listening to what Lean In has to say!)
Overall, I agree with Sandberg: The rise of the tradwife movement, as we’ve seen it on social media, has been harmful to women. I’m interested to see whatever AI-powered research Lean In produces on this topic. If Sandberg can figure out a way to give women’s ambition as much of a hold online as baking bread and making baby food from scratch, we will all be better for it.
Emma Hinchliffe emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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