I Do Not Girl Boss. I Own.

By: Christine E. Ohenewah, J.D. | November 2, 2025

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Christine E. Ohenewah is a Lawyer, Humanist, and Professor building a university that transforms how people understand and claim power. She is the Founder of The Elizabeth Tweneboah Foundation, where she is creating a new model of higher learning that builds creators over consumers and empowers individuals to construct lives aligned with their potential. Her flagship initiative, Men's Rea™, uses legal reasoning to help men build self-governance systems that drive them toward purpose. A graduate of Cornell Law School, Columbia University, the University of Chicago, and Macalester College, and former White Collar Investigations lawyer, her interdisciplinary work in legal and humanistic thought, power, and gender has been featured in Business Insider, USA Wire, and New York Weekly. She writes and speaks on masculinity, legal thinking, and the future of education, and serves as faculty at three universities in Criminology, Sociology, and Law and Ethics.

I do not believe in “girl bossing.”

Because those who operate in abundance and know who they are need not resort to posturing superiority they already possess.

You see, there is an interesting tension that I consistently navigate as a Black woman who occupies traditionally masculine-coded paths and occupations: Lawyer, Professor, Entrepreneur.

This tension surfaces when contemplating whether to embody humility and benevolence or to assert dominance and competition.

The former is my default, even though most would advise me to embody the latter. I understand why, given the vulnerabilities associated with being a Black woman.

However, the sociologist in me immediately sounds the alarm. There are many forms of power–why must apparent dominance and competition be the most glorified forms? By promoting the adaptation of these traits, are we suggesting that humility and benevolence are too “feminine” to coexist with success?

I understand the sentiment behind girl bossing. I also understand that in certain contexts, assertiveness and competitive energy are necessary tools for survival and advancement. My critique is not of women who choose this path, but of a culture that suggests it is the only path to power.

Still, I cannot help but notice that girl boss culture harbors cognitive dissonance. If we believe that women are powerful, then we should not need to perform what are considered to be traditionally masculine traits to be taken seriously.

My Africanist leanings again offer this: those who operate in abundance and know who they are need not resort to posturing superiority they already possess.

To be clear, I am incredibly confident in my own mind and ability to achieve. I do not believe in pretending to be something I am not in order to succeed.

What I do believe in? Ownership. Owning who you are in full form. Owning what you believe in. Owning what you do.

There are many ways to be powerful. Mine begins with knowing I already am.

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