This book represents an original and timely intervention in work on girls and celebrity culture, spotlighting how girls navigate the politics and possibilities of female leadership and its representation. Based on original audience research, it crucially complicates the simplicity of ‘role model’ debates and deftly illuminates the complex intersections between female visibility, gender and power.

Su Holmes, professor of TV Studies, University of East Anglia

Who Runs The World? is a wonderful and fascinating read, combining media analysis and theoretical depth with lively excerpts from Paule and Yelin’s numerous interviews with schoolgirls throughout the UK. This excellent and important book pulls off the impressive double move of picking apart the neoliberal individualization of ‘leadership’ fetishism whilst simultaneously analyzing the ongoing sexism and misogyny that pushes women out of spaces of power.

Jo Littler, professor of Cultural, Media, and Social Analysis, Goldsmiths University of London

This groundbreaking book offers the first study of how girls themselves understand the widespread leadership initiatives and empowerment discourses aimed at them. The authors carefully analyze the way girls talk about public discourses on gender and power, their understandings of the misogyny women in public life face, and the risks of visibility. Paule and Yelin powerfully demonstrate how the language of leadership and empowerment, which dominate contemporary culture and feminism, is aimed at ‘fixing’ girls rather than addressing the structural barriers that block them from reaching top positions. Who Runs The World? is a must read for educators, policy makers, journalists, broadcasters, scholars and anyone concerned with addressing the intersecting inequalities that girls continue to face as they grow into women.

Milly Williamson, vice-chair, Media Communications and Cultural Studies Association, Goldsmith University of London