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

by Sheryl Sandberg

Like me, most of the women I know do a great job worrying that we don’t measure up.

Sorry but isn’t this whole book adding to the frustration of women by adding to the illusion that they can become the COO if they would only just lean in a little bit more?

In 1975, stay-at-home mothers spent an average of about eleven hours per week on primary child care (defined as routine caregiving and activities that foster a child’s well-being, such as reading and fully focused play). Mothers employed outside the home in 1975 spent six hours doing these activities. Today, stay-at-home mothers spend about seventeen hours per week on primary child care, on average, while mothers who work outside the home spend about eleven hours. This means that an employed mother today spends about the same amount of time on primary child care activities as a nonemployed mother did in 1975.21

When evaluating identically described male and female candidates for the job of police chief, respondents who claimed to be the most impartial actually exhibited more bias in favor of male candidates.

Interesting and unsurprising all at once

The researchers speculated that men in traditional marriages are not overtly hostile toward women but instead are “benevolent sexists”—holding positive yet outdated views about women.10 (Another term I have heard is “nice guy misogynists.”) These men might even believe that women have superior strengths in certain areas like moral reasoning, which makes them better equipped to raise children—and perhaps less equipped to succeed in business.11 In all likelihood, men who share this attitude are unaware of how their conscious and unconscious beliefs hurt their female colleagues.

“While she’s really good at her job, she’s just not as well liked by her peers.” When I hear language like that, I bring up the Heidi/Howard study and how success and likeability are negatively correlated for women. I ask the evaluator to consider the possibility that this successful female may be paying a gender-based penalty. Usually people find the study credible, nodding their heads in agreement, but then bristle at the suggestion that this might be influencing the reaction of their management team. They will further defend their position by arguing that it cannot be gender related because—aha!—both men and women have problems with that particular female executive. But the success and likeability penalty is imposed by both men and women. Women perpetuate this bias as well.

It is a painful truth that one of the obstacles to more women gaining power has sometimes been women already in power. Women in the generations ahead of me believed, largely correctly, that only one woman would be allowed to ascend to the senior ranks in any particular company.

Patriarchy has no gender!

Both men and women do, in fact, demand more time and warmth from women in the workplace. We expect greater niceness from women and can become angry when they don’t conform to that expectation.

Men of all ages must commit to changing the leadership ratios.

Right, but where’s their book on how to do this?

One of the conflicts inherent in having choice is that we all make different ones. There is always an opportunity cost, and I don’t know any woman who feels comfortable with all her decisions.

Maybe because there’s no right way to be a woman and also because every way of being a woman is wrong (in patriarchy)

Because feminism wasn’t supposed to make us feel guilty, or prod us into constant competitions over who is raising children better, organizing more cooperative marriages, or getting less sleep. It was supposed to make us free—to give us not only choices but the ability to make these choices without constantly feeling that we’d somehow gotten it wrong.”20

Why blame feminism though?

Society has long undervalued the contributions of those who work without a salary.

In a system where value is assigned based on $$$, yeah, unpaid labor is given low value, and paid caregiving is compensated according to how we value caregiving, which is not at all, apparently, though everything else is made possible by this labor, which has been labeled ‘essential’ in 2020 in many circumstances.