Anatomy of a Book Promotion
16th October 2026
On 24 September, a self-described founder and “adviser to CEOs” posted on LinkedIn about Gucci and Dior withdrawing their handbags from the Australian department store David Jones. After describing the store’s financial difficulties, she suggested that David Jones’s female chief executive was experiencing the “glass cliff.” The “glass cliff” refers to the idea that, having broken through the glass ceiling, women are disproportionately appointed to lead failing organisations, where they are most likely to be blamed when things go wrong.
“What on earth does the management’s gender have to do with it?” asked fellow LinkedIn user Chris Bradley, a senior partner at McKinsey and a director of the McKinsey Global Institute (whom I interviewed for Quillette’s YouTube channel in July).
It was a relatively innocuous question. But the ensuing debate would have a cascade of consequences. Within three weeks, Bradley had been stripped of his directorship and other leadership responsibilities at McKinsey, and had his face plastered across Bloomberg, the Australian Financial Review, The Sydney Morning Herald, the New York Post, Fast Company, and other international publications. Meanwhile, Julia Carreon and Shannon Nutter, whose new book had been recommended in the original LinkedIn post, enjoyed an unexpected burst of publicity.
There is no realm of life that toxic feminism has not corrupted.