Mark Zuckerberg’s Take on Masculine Energy in Business

Let’s raise a porcelain teacup—pinkies up, ladies!—to Mark Zuckerberg for finally mansplaining to us how the corporate world needs more “masculine energy.”

The owner of Meta went on the Joe Rogan podcast in early January to talk up the benefits of aggression in the workplace and complain that corporations have become “culturally neutered.” You know, the kind of language that generationally medieval husbands use when their wives ask them to clean the kitchen after dinner.

“I think a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered. Masculine energy is good, and obviously, society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture was really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg told Rogan. “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”

Is Aggression the Key to Workplace Success?

Let’s ignore for the moment Zuckerberg’s abandonment of fact-checking on Facebook. Not that you could ever trust most of what you saw there, but now the place is awash in AI-generated falsehoods and “Follow Me” posts full of blatant, swampy rubbish intended solely to provoke argument or naive approval. To look at some of these posts, Taylor Swift was absolutely devastated to realize at the Super Bowl that some people weren’t her biggest fans. Sure she was. Oddly, some people buy into it—at least those who want to believe it’s true.

No matter. Even if people want to argue, on Facebook, provocation means comments and comments mean attention and, potentially, money. I’ve already reduced my consumption to a brief daily check-in on my friends and groups (and if you don’t know how to limit your feed to those, you might want to find out here, now.)

But even forgetting all the other Metachinations, Zuckerberg’s statement on the Rogan show contained a cringe factor worthy of a century ago. To start, who said women can’t be as aggressive as men? His wholehearted adoption of ancient stereotypes is, if anything, further indication that he needs to hire more women … and listen to them. And of course, who said that aggression is the best way to run a business? Or that men are the best ones to run businesses, period?

The Rise of Women-Led Businesses and Collaborative Leadership

Coincidentally, just as Zuckerberg was coming out with his bro pronouncements, Wells Fargo released an interesting study about feminine business energy.

The study found that women-owned businesses represent 39 percent of all businesses—more than 14 million. They employ 12.2 million workers and generate $2.7 trillion in revenue. Of course, that’s a pretty small percentage of the U.S. workforce, but it doesn’t include businesses run by women even if not owned by them, or the businesses in which women play leading and vital roles. Besides, if the numbers aren’t quite there yet, women are certainly on the path to catching up.

From 2019 to 2023—a period that encompassed the COVID-19 pandemic when many businesses were closing—the number of women-owned businesses increased at almost double the rate of those owned by men, the Wells Fargo study found, and then doubled down, with women’s businesses growing at 4.5 times the rate of men’s during 2022-23, the last year studied.

Meanwhile, in early February, Meta announced that it was laying off thousands of its workers.

It’s a lot of data that boils down to this: Zuckerberg should do a little fact-checking before opening his mouth to put down women in business. Masculine energy might and should mean something very different from what he seems to think.

The Meta Contradiction: Why Zuckerberg’s Own Company Is Struggling

For years, I’ve fantasized about making a very short film—two minutes and 15 seconds, to be exact—set to the 1963 song by Frankie Vallie and the Four Seasons, “Walk Like a Man.” While the soundtrack plays, I would film short cuts of men walking. Yes, a few men of the type Zuckerberg likes to imagine himself being—beefy strutters, purposeful businessmen in suits. But there also would be elderly and infirm men walking slowly. Fathers holding their toddlers’ hands to help them take their first steps, and later taking their kids for a swim or teaching a daughter how to have a catch. Thoughtful botanists taking the measurement of the health of wilderness. Men at a large corporation shuffling into a meeting room to listen to their boss—a woman. Male nurses walking to the side of a patient to alleviate their pain. Walking like a man means many things, as does walking like a woman.

As the husband of Patricia Chan, a woman who went through the arduous training process to become a pediatrician, you would think Zuckerberg would know a little bit more about just how take-charge women can be. It’s hard not to wonder what Chan herself thinks of her husband’s lack of awareness. What if the CEO of one of the hospitals with which she’s been affiliated had said that medical care needed more masculine energy and aggression?

Masculine vs. Feminine Leadership? It’s a False Choice

What will Zuckerberg’s three daughters make of his statement once they are old enough to be concerned with such things? They won’t have to worry about money, but they could face rejection in their chosen spheres by male bosses who favor some fake thing called masculine energy.

Of course, it could be that Zuckerberg, who often has seemed less a leader and more the type who puts his finger up to test the wind and then pretends he already was going in that direction, knows how wrong that statement was but wanted to project testosterone to impress an audience.

Then again, let’s remember that Zuckerberg’s precursor to Facebook was Facemash, a site for men to rate the hotness of women. That had nothing to do with Facebook, he now says. It was just a “prank.”

If only the same could be said of the New Sexism at Meta.

Karin Klein somehow survived in newspaper journalism for 48 years, with most of that time spent at the Los Angeles Times as an award-winning editorial writer. She’s also written for TIME, YES!, Vice, Atlas, Obscura, CalMatters, The Optimist, and the Sacramento Bee. She is the author of two wildly different books: 50 Hikes in Orange County (Countryman Press, 2010 and 2016) and Rethinking College: A Guide to Thriving Without a Degree (HarperCollins, 2024).