The Happy Marriage of Capitalism and Feminism

Sheryl Sandberg was not a feminist when she was attending college in the 1980s. She and her friends thought that feminists were angry, man-hating, humorless, and irrelevant. She has since come to the realization that men run the world, and she has launched a new feminist movement called ‘‘Lean In’’ to change that. Women lead only 17 of the 195 independent countries and 21 of the Fortune 500 companies; getting more women into these top offices is her goal. From her current position as COO of Facebook, Sandberg is urging women to work hard, dream big, and ‘‘break things.’’ Lean In is a multi-media phenomenon. The book Lean In, which has spent months on The New York Times best seller list, is an elaboration of her now famous TED Talk (with nearly 2.5 million views). Proceeds from the book support a nonprofit organization called Lean In Foundation. Lean In websites encourage readers to form informal discussion groups called Lean In Circles, and post their testimonials on the Lean In blog. Corporate sponsors are implementing Lean In seminars as part of their diversity training programs. So far, 61 Fortune 500 companies have partnered with the Lean In movement, including Chevron, Coca-Cola, DuPont, and Wal-Mart. The basic message of Lean In is that women are disadvantaged in career development due to internalized sexism. Our culture teaches us that women are less aggressive, less ambitious, and less deserving than men. Consequently, women hold themselves back, expressing reluctance to seize opportunities and volunteer for risky stretch assignments. Overwhelmed by the desire to be popular, women give up competing for success and settle for stable jobs. Motherhood also stymies career development. According to Sandberg, women start pulling back on their career ambitions before they have children—even before they find a mate—in anticipation of the demands that motherhood will place on them. A large percentage of highly educated professional women ‘‘opt out’’ of the workforce to care for their children, with disastrous longterm economic consequences. The only way to counter this impulse and break the glass ceiling is to stay determinedly focused at work, and, well, lean in. Sandberg does not deny that workplaces and political organizations are sexist. She writes that barriers to women in power are both institutional and internal, but her focus is on changing internal barriers because they are more malleable than external ones (‘‘We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today’’ [p. 9]). Her advice to women boils down to three points: she encourages women to seek out and pursue all opportunities for career development (‘‘sit at the table’’), to demand that their husbands take equal responsibility for housework and childcare (‘‘make your partner a real partner’’), and to minimize any disruption of their careers posed by maternity and motherhood (‘‘don’t leave before you leave’’). Lean In easily could be dismissed as the latest twist on the classic American genre of upbeat self-improvement manuals. Indeed, after examining the book, the editor of Contemporary Sociology was unsure that it merited any serious attention. Certainly the book is hopelessly class-biased; Sandberg is talking to the one percent (a point she readily concedes). The book is filled with cloying gratitude toward the men (husbands, mentors, bosses) who facilitated her career, and self-deprecating personal anecdotes that often directly contradict the advice she gives Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, by Sheryl Sandberg with Nell Scovell. New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 2013. 228pp. $24.95 cloth. ISBN: 9780385 349949. 58 Review Essays