Tory Burch may be most well-known for her incredible style, designs, and her wonderful Tory Burch Foundation. Now, however, she seems to be adding writer to her resume. Tory Burch's LinkedIn essay is feminist career advice we all need. Burch took to the professional social network to discuss her own career, success, and her desire to encourage other women to push the boundaries in their professional lives.
Burch isn't the first woman in fashion or entertainment to give solid career advice, though. In fact, it seems as though there has been an onslaught of women supporting other women's professional pursuits. While this isn't exactly a radical notion, the public acknowledgement of the lack of gender diversity in business and the looming gender wage gap seems to have placed women's professional goals and struggles into mainstream conversation. Perhaps that's why stars like Jennifer Lawrence and Chelsea Handler have penned essays, much like Burch's, encouraging women in the workplace. Add style superstars like Jenna Lyons to the group, and you've got tons of badass women cheering on your goals.
On Thursday, Burch joined the ranks of powerful women offering inspiring, feminist advice. The Tory Burch Foundation creator took to her Linkedin page and penned, "Don't Wait for Doors to Open," an essay that touches on the double standards of having ambitions when it comes to men and women.
In the piece, Burch writes, "I realized that I had bought into the stigma that women shouldn’t be ambitious — that it was unattractive somehow. In men, it is a compliment and in women it’s used negatively. But that’s a harmful double standard that we must overcome for women to achieve parity in the workplace." Burch has overcome her aversion to the word ambition, but she continues to fight against the cultural norm of associating forwardness with unattractiveness in women.
But why is Burch's Linkedin essay important? It's more than just the fact that she's encouraging other women. Burch is offering a critique of the professional system in which so many women work. Not only does she look to the way society has impacted professional women, but she also forges ahead with a criticism of the many industries that discourage women entrepreneurs. She writes, "Only 4.6 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Clearly, we have a long way to go and we’re not going to get there by hiding the fact that we are ambitious."
Burch's essay is a new piece of feminist career advice. Not only does she lament the way women have been encouraged to all but cower in their professional lives but she reveals her own fears. When Bruch opened her first store in New York, she was, "afraid no one would walk through the doors." The designer doesn't place herself in a box needing to be a fearless, bold career woman — even though she is one. Instead, she allows her worries to be known, showing that professional women need not mask their worries but that they can have these fears and still not hide their ambitions.
Tory Burch's Linkedin essay is feminist career advice that we all need, but it's more than that. It's a woman showing a bit of her former fears, indicting a society that perpetuates gender disparity, and encouraging women to move beyond it. If you didn't already realize that Burch was a true star, it's going to be hard not to realize it now.
