Is Mark Zuckerberg right, do companies 'need more masculine energy'?
A slew of billionaire tech bro-led companies, from Amazon to Meta, have recently announced the scrapping of schemes designed to make the workplace fairer for all – with Facebook founder and Instagram CEO, Mark Zuckerberg, recently saying “a lot of the corporate world is pretty culturally neutered” and that it needs “more masculine energy” via Joe Rogan’s podcast.
A new Meta statement explained the company will “no longer have a team focussed on DEI” (diversity, equality and inclusion), is ending its related training programmes and will no longer ensure diverse candidates are in the mix when recruiting, saying some have a “charged” view of DEI as a concept. Some corners of the internet have nicknamed the acronym ‘Didn’t Earn It’.
But back to the podcast: “Masculine energy is good and obviously society has plenty of that, but I think corporate culture is really trying to get away from it,” Zuckerberg also said with a smile. “It’s one thing to say we want to be welcoming and make a good environment for everyone, and I think it’s another to basically say that masculinity is bad. And I just think we kind of swung culturally to that part of the spectrum, where it’s like ‘masculinity is toxic, we have to get rid of it completely’, it’s like ‘no, both of these things are good’.”
During the interview Zuckerberg also said, “I think having a culture that celebrates the aggression a bit more has its own merits that are really positive.”
The timing of his comments, ahead of Donald Trump’s return to office next week, is impeccable and many have speculated that Zuckerberg is publicly leaning into ‘anti-woke’ discourse favoured by the likes of Trump and his newfound bestie (and employee), Elon Musk.
Since taking over Twitter, now called X, Musk has famously advocated for ‘free speech’, allowing the platform to descend into a hotbed of mis- and disinformation, with fact-checking and reporting abuse or illegal content largely left up to the community rather than a robust internal system. Now, Meta has pledged to go the same way and will soon scrap third-party fact checking on its platforms and slacken content moderation – which experts have said will normalise hatred online and allow potentially harmful false information to thrive.
Given that women and minorities are the most likely targets of online abuse, violence and harassment, with more than half of women saying they’ve witnessed misogyny on the internet, this is a huge cause for concern – as are Zuckerberg’s comments focussed on the working world itself needing more masculinity (read: in with aggression and dominance, seen as typically male traits, and out with the female-linked ones, like empathy and kindness).
Amongst those being vocal in their criticism of Meta’s planned changes are the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, who shared a statement saying, “As [Meta] announce these changes undoubtedly responding to political winds, they once again abandon public safety in favour of profit, chaos, and control.”
So, is Zuckerberg right that the corporate world has basically ‘had its balls cut off’ (or as he chose to word it, become too “culturally neutered”) and in dire need of more masculine energy? We took a deep-dive…
Equal pay
Here in the UK, the gender pay gap is still thriving in 2025 – in fact, last year some metrics used to measure it actually widened according to one charity fighting for equal pay.
Speaking to Cosmopolitan UK when the data was first released, Jemima Olchawski, Chief Executive of the Fawcett Society, said, "It's incredibly alarming to see the mean gender pay gap widen in 2024 and shows that without concerted effort most women won’t see equal pay in our working lifetime. Today's data confirms that the Gender Pay Gap increases with age as women take on more and more unpaid care work for children and older people."
The Fawcett Society says it uses the mean hourly gender pay gap for full-time workers (11.3% in 2024) to calculate the date of Equal Pay Day because this figure captures the full impact of men being more likely to be very high earners.
Olchawski added, "The gender pay gap is an indicator of a whole series of ways that women are disadvantaged and excluded from our economy."
However, when looking at the median rather than the mean, the government’s latest gender pay gap found the average gap between full-time employees across all industries closed slightly, moving from 7.5% to to 7% last year. Still, the full-time median hourly earnings (excluding overtime) for men come in at £19.24 vs £17.88 for women as of April 2024. So yeah, a small improvement in some ways perhaps… but not great.
Maternity rights
Yeah, also not great, we’re sorry to report. While the UK ranks third worldwide when it comes to the length of leave women are afforded post-birth on average, the country sits way down the bottom of the table when it comes to financial support for parents. Ditto, while the Labour government has pledged to make flexible working the new norm from day one, as well as maternity and paternity rights, there’s still a big gaping loophole in that rule: there’s no promises companies actually will, nor that they need to adequately justify it beyond ‘because we said so’. Meanwhile, statutory maternity pay remains at 90% of your average weekly earning (pre-tax) for the first six weeks and then £184 or less (depending on your typical income) for the remaining 33 weeks – same as it has been for five years – and men and women still don’t have equal parental leave in this country.
Several charities in the equality space have branded the UK’s ‘sharenting’ leave scheme a flop, with Dr Jeremy Davies, Deputy CEO of the Fatherhood Institute, recently commenting that “many couples aren’t eligible for shared parental leave in the first place; most of those who are can’t afford to use it; fathers can only take the leave if the mother gives up some of hers; and it’s unwieldy for employers to administer.” Dr Davies added, “International evidence shows clearly that if we want dads to take a greater share of the caregiving, we need to give them their own leave, paid at a rate where they can afford to take it.”
When speaking to Cosmopolitan UK recently about the impact of pre-baby burnout, founder of Pregnant Then Screwed, Joeli Brearley explained that maternity pay and a lack of infrastructure for working mothers also has a huge knock-on effect on a woman’s earnings post-maternity leave too.
“For the first six years after birth, mothers earn 43%** less than fathers,” she said, noting this is on average per week, possibly due to mothers needing to reduce their hours in favour of accommodating childcare; childcare costs in the UK are among the most expensive in the world.
As for maternity pay itself, on average it pans out that women are left with an income that’s only 47% of the National Living Wage and just 28% of British people believe mat leave pay is adequate. Brilliant.
Diversity
Despite research shared by LinkedIn finding that inclusive teams are over 35% more productive and making better decisions 87% of the time – and it being plain common sense that fostering an environment where everyone, regardless of race, age, economic background, gender, disability and sexuality, feels welcome is a Very Good Thing – sadly many companies are still failing miserably at it. Embracing diversity and inclusion schemes is also said to not only allow businesses to attract a better range of talent with a more diverse school of thought, but 76% of employees and job hunters have marked diversity as being an important part of their working life.
As for how we’re doing on the diversity front in the UK, there’s still lots of improvements to be made – so it’s concerning to see leading businesses like Meta bin off their commitments, or at the very least take a worrying approach to rebranding them.
One-third of workplaces have been noted as discriminatory, neglecting to promote workers due to their age, race, gender or because they have a disability. Research has shown companies that do have diversity and inclusion schemes in place are still falling short too, with 49% reporting a lack of support from their company’s leadership team(s). Surely, an extra shot of masculinity is the cure-all here?
Women at the top
Despite women making up 49% of those in employment, just one in ten (or 8%, depending on which study you read) of the UK’s biggest companies have a female as its chief executive – in spite of data showing female-led start-ups generate higher revenues. Experts suggesting the reasons range from women lacking in confidence to the motherhood penalty to outright prejudice and/or discrimination during the hiring process.
Still, if we’re looking for a silver lining, at least there are now more women at the helm than there are men named Peter (which was not the case in 2020…) and 42% of boards have a female presence.
Sexual harassment
While sexual harassment in the workplace can impact anyone, regardless of gender, the stats are pretty clear that women are the most impacted; government data says 40% of women have been harassed while trying to do their job vs 18% of men. That spectrum includes everything from lewd comments and inappropriate jokes, right through to serious sexual assault.
Given that another survey found almost half of people who’ve witnessed sexual harassment in their office don’t feel comfortable or confident in reporting it, who knows the true extent of the figures. But anyway! Yes please to more masculine energy by way of a solution.
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