Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, Sheryl Sandberg

J. Howard Miller, We Can Do It!, 1942

(August 13) I didn't have any expectations about this at all… why did I read it? I have in my notes “because short and trendy.” It is well known and I kept seeing it recommended, but I don't remember whose recommendation tipped the scale… maybe Michele Landsberg's?

And then it was much more interesting than I thought it would be! I had this bias against people with MBAs: I have found them usually to be formulaic, best-practices-oriented, and phobic about originality or quirkiness, and since Sheryl Sandberg had worked for Facebook and Google, I assumed Lean In would be a business mogul's how-I-got-here story, offering a few tips and tricks to her fellow women, along formulaic lines.

But it was not that. Sandberg has taken a long, hard look at what holds women back from both the outside and the inside, and she offers solutions that are not easy-breezy and have to be grudgingly accepted. No "tips" or "tricks."

Sad but true: people, both men and women, don’t like to see women succeed in business. They criticize women for failings they would never even notice in a man. There is so much wanting to pull women down. So Sandberg says women must be nice, must jump through hoops successful men don't have to, must accommodate that negative attitude, until we get enough women in place that they don't have to do those things anymore. It's maddening, but she's right. The point is to get more women into positions of power.

Every fibre of my feminist being resents that women have to do anything different from men to get … anything! And it is so sad to accept that many people blame the victim.

But Sandberg is right.

So this is a practical approach to feminism from a practical MBA / manager type of person. Her theory on pregnancy / maternity leave: “don’t withdraw: work like a dog” was different and interesting, and no doubt absolutely correct.