Why Women Trash Successful Women

In 1976, Jo Freeman published an essay in Ms. Magazine titled, “Trashing: The Dark Side of Sisterhood,” which described how groups of women within the feminist movement attacked and ostracized those seen as too visible or ambitious.

“To do something significant, to be recognized, to achieve, is to imply that one is ‘making it off other women’s oppression’ or that one thinks oneself better than other women,” she wrote. The piece struck a chord, receiving more letters in response than anything else the magazine had printed.

As various over-the-top denunciations of Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, the avowedly feminist author of “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” suggest, it remains depressingly relevant decades later.

Not all the critiques of “Lean In” have been unfair or unduly personal, but there has been enough viciousness directed toward Sandberg to indicate that a lot of women, some self-described feminists among them, still have a problem with female power.

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