Three years ago I wrote a piece for the FT suggesting that the time was ripe for women managers, now an increasingly influential majority in US business, to start moulding the tired management tropes of the 20th century into something fresher and more empathetic. Given subsequent developments, this might have qualified as the worst timed article ever – but for the shrewdness of my article interviewees, who all ended by warning me of the dangers of a backlash. 

Of course they were right, even though they didn’t anticipate its extent. The backlash was swift, first in the shape of Roe v Wade, then the MAGA-inspired assault on woke and diversity and finally the abrupt cultural pivot of the US workplace towards a take-no-prisoners, often overtly macho management style, elegantly summed up on one side by the, sadly unfulfilled, cage-fight challenge between Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg, and on the other by the banker who declared his relief at being able to use the words ‘pussy’ and ‘retard’ in public again without fear of retribution. 

It’s worth spending a moment considering how savage the backlash has been. With hindsight, the reset had already begun with the ending of Covid, as impatient bosses coupled increasingly pressing demands for a return to work with the imposition of work surveillance tools and tighter performance management generally. With Big Tech and Wall Street in the lead, and fuelled by the advent of AI, big firms have accompanied successive rounds of redundancies with a noticeably toughened-up stance on productivity. Some leaders have taken to boasting of Silicon Valley’s ‘9-9-6’ culture – a bruising six-day-a-week 9am to 9pm work schedule – that they claim is the only way of keeping up in the AI arms race. Quite apart from the physiological and psychological damage wrought by such extreme regimes, this 72-hour work week might have been designed as a filter to screen out women, who as everywhere juggle paid jobs with being the unpaid domestic carers of choice.

At the same time, Big Tech’s slashing of trust and safety teams has created a coarsened, even hostile digital environment, fuelling fears that the headlong unregulated growth of artificial intelligence is fostering a new age of gender inequality by facilitating widespread digital abuse and systemic bias. On one hand, tech firms are monetizing ‘nudify’ tools and non-consensual deepfakes, while safety guardrails are dangerously absent. Beyond sexual violence, critics claim that AI reinforces misogyny and prejudice in critical sectors like healthcare, finance, and recruitment, where biased algorithms provide inferior service to women. In this view, only preventive, safety-by-design regulation can stop a downward spiral that excludes women from the digital future and erodes their fundamental human rights. 

Add in Zuckerberg’s famous call on the very manly Joe Rogan show for ‘more masculine energy’ to reinvigorate the US’s ‘neutered’ workplaces, and  a chainsaw-toting Elon Musk celebrating the depredations of his DOGE troops with what looked like a Nazi salute, and it would be surprising if women were feeling anything other than unwelcome at the corporate centre. Far-right fringe commentators such as Nick Fuentes have have been unafraid to cast women as the ‘No 1 political enemy in America’, asserting that they ‘constrain everything’ and suggesting they should be kicked out of the workplace altogether.

Grim, yes. Yet every action brings a reaction. On closer analysis the full story turns out to be more nuanced, and less depressing, than first appearances might suggest. It turns out that out of the limelight women have been far from idle. As federal support has dwindled and the traditional corporate environment become less welcoming, women are simply moving out and setting up on their own. Female entrepreneurship in the US is hitting all-time highs. As of early 2026, women were accounting for almost half of all new business applications, nearly 70% up since 2019. What is driving this surge is nothing less than a new ‘financial and lifestyle strategy’ by which women are taking back control over their careers and workplaces.

And it is happening across the board. A self-sustaining ecosystem is emerging, fuelled by women funding women. Women reportedly now comprise nearly 50% of angel investors, providing a vital alternative to traditional venture capital, which, depressingly, has seen funding for women drop to historic lows. The resulting women-led firms are finding particular success in ‘resilience’ sectors such as healthcare and femtech, sustainable energy, and edtech, where male raw output is no substitute for focus, empathy and value. Interestingly, research suggests that these firms often operate with superior capital efficiency, burning less cash than their male-led counterparts and outpacing them in turnover growth.

It may be too soon to speak of a ‘Great Divergence’ in the American business landscape. But it seems clear that something significant is going on. While public attention is focused on Big Tech and finance, conspicuously politicised as they have now become, women are quietly moving out to decentralised and less fraught sectors where the ‘political’ writ doesn’t run. In effect, manosphere-style corporates have become a kind of centrifuge, spinning out female talent to become entrepreneurs in charge of their own

boutique consultancies and micro-agencies. While the corporate centre remains noisy, politically favored, and volatile, the decentralized female periphery is showing itself to be financially stable, efficient, and resilient to the current chaotic economic climate. Watch this space.

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Pets Cornered (cont)

The FT rather agrees with me on the subject of vets and private equity. Lex thinks the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has meekly sheathed its claws for Big Vet – the six large firms that have locked up nearly two-thirds of the UK’s £6.7bn veterinary market – in its polite just-published review of a sector where, surprise surprise, consolidation has been accompanied by sharply rising prices and acute lack of comparability, to the mounting chagrin of anxious pet owners. No break-ups or divestitures are recommended, so the firms can keep their labs and pharmacies, and not much either in the way of price controls. They can continue to grow as before. No wonder investors are purring, and one of the big six has welcomed the report. Lex notes that PE firms are already busily rolling up small firms in areas of human health, such as dentistry and fertility clinics: ‘The hope is that [the CMA] shows more teeth there’.