The rise and fall of the girlboss (Byrne & Giuliani, 2025) | JBV FT50

Welcome to Revise and Resubmit—the podcast where we break down cutting-edge academic research that’s shaping the future of business, entrepreneurship, and society. If you’re a scholar, a practitioner, or just someone who loves diving deep into the insights of the world’s top thinkers, you’re in the right place.This isn’t just any research. We feature studies from the most prestigious academic journals—including those on the FT50 list, the world’s top business journals ranked by the Financial Times.Make sure to subscribe to "Revise and Resubmit" on Spotify, check out our YouTube channel "Weekend Researcher", and find us on Amazon Prime and Apple Podcasts for more deep dives into the research that matters.Today, we’re unpacking a fascinating study from the Journal of Business Venturing: The Rise and Fall of the Girlboss: Gender, Social Expectations, and Entrepreneurial Hype, authored by Janice Byrne and Antonio Paco Giuliani.The "girlboss" started as an emblem of empowerment—a symbol of women breaking barriers in business. But somewhere along the way, the same media that built the narrative tore it down. What happened? This paper explores the power of media framing, revealing how the hype cycle around women entrepreneurs is often designed for both meteoric rise and inevitable collapse.Through an analysis of over 2,600 media articles, the authors argue that entrepreneurial hype isn’t just about innovation—it’s about who gets to be hyped and how expectations are shaped by power, inequality, and gender norms.So, is the fall of the "girlboss" just an isolated case, or does it reflect a larger pattern in how media builds—and dismantles—entrepreneurial success? And more importantly, what does this mean for the next generation of women entrepreneurs navigating these same forces?A huge thank you to Janice Byrne and Antonio Paco Giuliani for this groundbreaking research, and to Science Direct and Elsevier for publishing it in the prestigious Journal of Business Venturing.ReferenceByrne, J., & Giuliani, A. P. (2025). The rise and fall of the girlboss: Gender, social expectations and entrepreneurial hype. Journal of Business Venturing, 40(4), 106486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2025.106486Youtube Channel⁠https://www.youtube.com/@weekendresearcher⁠Support us on Patreonhttps://patreon.com/weekendresearcher