women are surrounded by headlines and stories warning them that they cannot be committed to both their families and careers. They are told over and over again that they have to choose, because if they try to do too much, they’ll be harried and unhappy. Framing the issue as “work-life balance”—as if the two were diametrically opposed—practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?12
Women’s decisions to give up on their ambitions as adults are often the result of learned dispositions and habits acquired during childhood. But despite this socialization and its long-term effects, Sandberg doesn’t really believe in glass ceilings or see the need for affirmative action. She thinks the main force holding women back—at least educated women—is their own hang-ups and fears. Women don’t need favors, they just need to believe in themselves. “Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face … Without fear, women can pursue professional success and personal fulfillment.”13 Deborah Gruenfeld calls Sandberg a post-feminist—a woman who believes that “when you blame someone else for keeping you back, you are accepting your powerlessness.”14
So how should women take power and the corner office? Women must face their fears, be aggressive, sit at the table, raise their hands, and not put them down until they’re called upon. That’s what men do, after all. Women must be cognizant of biases against women and adjust their strategies—“think personally, act communally”—and give legitimate explanations for their negotiation demands. They must choose the right partner—someone willing to share dreams and dishes. The bad boys are fun, but for God’s sake, don’t marry them. Most important, women must zero in on growth and seize opportunities—both in the company they choose to work for and in their personal lives. Sandberg says that she decided to join Google in 2001 over other firms that were more of a sure thing because Eric Schmidt likened it to a rocket ship. “Over the years [she has] repeated Eric’s advice to countless people, encouraging them to reduce their career spreadsheets to one column: potential for growth.”15
Women of the World Unite … and Take Power!
Sandberg’s manifesto has struck a chord with women, at least in the United States. Some of the popularity of Lean In can be chalked up to Sandberg’s access to a massive media machine, but its acclaim reflects widespread concern among women, and society more broadly, about questions of feminism and women’s rights.
At its peak, the 1970s women’s movement was a dynamic social force that “wove together … three analytically distinct dimensions of gender injustice: economic, cultural, and political.”16 Since then, mainstream interest in feminism has ebbed and flowed, and the broad feminist platform has split, branching off in noncontiguous directions. In the 1980s most core feminist theorizing migrated to academia and turned to questions of culture and identity, while the broader movement battled attacks on reproductive rights. The 1990s saw a renewed interest in “girl power” and emergent strands of radical feminism, through zine and Riot Grrl culture, and the 2000s saw a rapid proliferation of “ladybloggers.”
These days, despite the reluctance of many women to identify as feminists, the woman question is once again in the air. A spate of new books and articles, by both young and old feminists are receiving attention from all corners. Splashy projects like Femen and SlutWalk are raising eyebrows and making headlines, and modern-day consciousness-raising projects like Laura Bates’s Everyday Sexism blog and the Who Needs Feminism tumblr page have proven remarkably popular. The topic of women’s rights in the Global South has also seen increasing passion and interest over the past two decades, though the plight of women in poor countries often plays second fiddle to concerns about violence, pornography, and reproductive rights that dominate Western feminist agendas and budgets.
Lean In earned widespread praise in the mainstream presses, but not everyone was keen on Sandberg’s stop-holding-yourself-back narrative. In an article for Dissent, Sarah Jaffe argued that feminists should stop obsessing over “the travails of some of the world’s most privileged women” because in real life “most women are up against a wall.” As the recovery from the Great Recession drags on, more women are finding themselves out of work or forced to get by on a Walmart salary. Jaffe notes that “this is where most women spend their time, not atop the Googleplex. This is where feminists should be spending their time, too.”17
Sandberg assures her readers that she is “acutely aware” of the external obstacles to gender equality and knows that most women are struggling to get by, not get the corner office. However, she claims that the argument is misguided, since the divide between feminists is “the ultimate chicken-and-egg situation”:
The chicken: Women will tear down the external barriers once we achieve leadership roles. We will march into our bosses’ offices and demand what we need … Or better yet, we’ll become bosses and make sure all women have what they need. The egg: we need to eliminate the external barriers to get women into those roles in the first place.18
In other words, it’s not the chicken or the egg, it’s the chicken and the egg: “Both sides are right.” By arguing, we just hold each other back. Some feminists can pursue the institutional-change-first route, while others (like herself) can pursue the take-power-first route. “Rather than engage in philosophical arguments over which comes first, let’s agree to wage battles on both fronts” and meet together on the other side. Together all the efforts of women will add up to a better world for women.19
The important thing for Sandberg is that women take power by any means necessary. She says she was blind to this problem when she was younger because she thought the feminists had won and that it was “just a matter of time until her generation took its share of leadership roles.”20 But now that she’s reached the top, she often finds herself the only woman in the room.
Sandberg argues that women face many of the problems they do because men hold positions of power and women’s voices are not heard. If women can gain an equal share of leadership roles they can speak for all women. Sandberg illustrates her point through a story from her time at Google. One day when she was very, very pregnant, Sandberg found herself in agony, huffing and puffing across the vast Google parking lot. In that moment it dawned on her that, dammit, Google needed pregnant woman parking. She marched into her boss’s office and demanded it. “Having one pregnant woman at the top—even one who looked like a whale—made the difference.” Sandberg is no longer pregnant, or working at Google, but the pregnancy parking has remained. Sandberg tells her parking space story because the experience illuminated what women need. “Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.” Every time someone like Sandberg marches into the boss’s office with a demand, or, ideally, becomes the boss, the world will get a little better for women. “The shift to a more equal world will happen person by person. We move closer to the larger goal of true equality with each woman who leans in.”21
Sandberg’s emphasis on taking power is shared widely among advocates for gender equality. A recent UK initiative called the Fabian Women’s Network is pushing the same line. The network’s mission is to facilitate the participation of women in politics and public life through its mentoring program and networking events. As one participant of the program said, “The privately educated, white middle-class males have had bridges to power built for hundreds of years. It’s time for women and ethnic minorities to build their own bridges.”22
In an influential 2012 article in the Atlantic Anne-Marie Slaughter argues that she once thought women could “have it all,” but that after working a job with fixed hours (as director of policy planning at the State Department) she realized she was dead wrong. Not only was Slaughter mistaken, she laments how for many years her public persona and speeches were deaf to the challenges facing young women today: “I’d been part, albeit unwittingly, of making millions of women feel that they are to blame if they cannot manage to rise up the ladde
r as fast as men and also have a family and an active home life (and be thin and beautiful to boot).” Slaughter argues that the way the economy and society are structured today makes it all but impossible for women to meet both their family and career needs satisfactorily. In most jobs women have no control over their schedules. When problems arise at home (as they often do with children) something has to give and for many women that something is their career ambitions.23 However, while Slaughter may disagree with Sandberg about women having it all today, she believes that someday women could have it all. But that someday will require women to “close the leadership gap; to elect a woman president and 50 women senators; to ensure that women are equally represented in the ranks of corporate executives and judicial leaders. Only when women wield power in sufficient numbers will we create a society that genuinely works for all women.”24
At a recent speech for the Clinton Global Initiative, Hillary Clinton argued that women are the world’s most “underused resource.” Warming up for a potential 2016 presidential bid, Clinton declared that the need for more female participation in public life and politics is a “no-brainer”: “When women participate in the economy, everyone benefits. When women participate in peacemaking and peacekeeping, we are all safer and more secure. And when women participate in politics, the effects ripple out across society.”25
The taking power strategy has bridged many divides in feminism, and there’s no doubt that women, especially women of color, need to move into positions of power. Take power arguments are also appealing for activists because they offer a tangible, manageable goal. Over the past four decades women have slowly pushed into spheres and roles that once seemed impossible. With a bit more hard work it seems possible to close the leadership gap. Sandberg certainly believes so: “The hard work of generations before us means that equality is within our reach … If we push hard now, this next wave can be the last wave. In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.26
But the argument rests on the problematic assumption that women are inherently, or because of cultural training, more decent than men, and that ladies look out for each other. Those who lived through the reign of Margaret Thatcher can attest to the flaws in this argument.
Marissa Mayer, Sandberg’s former comrade at Google, is a shining example of a woman who leaned in to power and influence. Mayer became the first pregnant CEO ever when she took the helm at Yahoo! in the summer of 2012. But instead of using her powerful position to help women, Mayer used it to cut 30 percent of Yahoo’s workforce and eliminate flextime, an arrangement that allowed hundreds of Yahoo workers to work from home one or two days a week so they could care for children, elderly parents, etc. Running against the grain of recent productivity research, Mayer argued that face-time trumps flextime: “Speed and quality are often sacrificed when we work from home … Some of the best decisions and insights come from hallway and cafeteria discussions, meeting new people, and impromptu team meetings.”27 Flextime was a long-standing policy at Yahoo. Many people (women in particular) chose the company over other tech companies because it offered this option, but because Mayer was the boss she could eliminate the policy with a stroke of her keyboard.
This anecdote is not meant to make Mayer look bad. It simply highlights a problem with the core idea of Sandberg, and many other prominent feminists, that putting women in power is the key to improving the lives of all women. The person in power is the boss. She gets to do pretty much whatever she wants. If she wants to put in pregnancy parking, great. If she wants to get rid of flextime she can do that, too. As Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist Susan Faludi wrote, “You can’t change the world for women by simply inserting female faces at the top of an unchanged system of social and economic power.” Or, as activist and author Charlotte Bunch once quipped, “You can’t just add women and stir.”28
Our Bodies, Ourselves … for Capital
The problems with Sandberg’s story run deeper than her belief in sisterly solidarity. Of central concern is the dominant message of Lean In—that women’s road to self-actualization and equality lies in the “perpetual acceleration of one’s own labor,” in the constant quest to grow and the bestowal of the fruits of that growth on their employers. In this formulation the growth of the company and the growth of the worker become inseparable.29
Both Sandberg and Mayer had (relatively) generous paid maternity leave, but Mayer chose not to use hers, and Sandberg used only part of hers. Both women felt intense pressure to get back to work to display their commitment to their companies and the projects they were working on. Sandberg says that women should try to be home for dinner with their children every night, but she fully accepts the “new normal” of working tirelessly before work, during work, and after work. “Facebook is available around the world 24/7, and for the most part, so [is she]. The days when [Sandberg] even thinks of unplugging for a weekend or vacation are long gone.”30
Sandberg is in good company: feminism has attached itself to the question of work for over a century. Betty Friedan, and many others, put wage work on a pedestal as the ultimate means for social expression and status attainment. But this one-to-one mapping of feminism onto wage work is potentially problematic for emancipatory strategies. Political scientist Kathi Weeks argues that while the struggle for “more and better work” is crucial, it is also important to consider how the “valorization of work” dominates “feminist analytical frames and political agendas.”31 For Weeks, the work ethic—the tight normative linkage between wage work and happiness, success, status, and self-worth—produces a human whose hopes, desires, beliefs, and acts all orbit around the centrality of work.32 The effect of Sandberg’s narrative of self-improvement is to channel women’s whole selves—the sum of their energies and desires—toward working harder and longer. It makes women “believe their labor serves the self and not the marketplace.”33
The point at issue is not that Lean In touts hard work, but rather that it presents scaling the corporate jungle gym as the solution to the problem of gender inequality: the Lean In story isn’t just a personal instruction sheet for how to win friends and influence people, it is a manifesto, an action plan, that argues all feminist strategies are compatible with one another. But they are not, and feminist ideals cannot be achieved if they are pursued Sandberg-style. Women who channel their energies toward reaching the top of corporate America undermine the struggles of women trying to realize institutional change by organizing unions and implementing laws that protect women (and men) in the workplace.
An anecdote shared by Sandberg illustrates this point: In 2010 Mark Zuckerberg pledged $100 million to improve the performance metrics of the Newark Public Schools. The money would be distributed through a new foundation called Startup: Education. Sandberg recommended Jen Holleran, a woman she knew “with deep knowledge and experience in school reform” to run the foundation. The only problem was that Jen was raising fourteen-month-old twins at the time, working part time, and not getting much help from her husband. Jen hesitated to accept the offer, fearful of “upsetting the current order” at home. But with Sandberg’s urging, she ultimately decided to “take the job because of the impact it would have.” Her husband stepped up to the plate and took on more household responsibilities and childcare, and now “Jen loves her job and is glad that she and her husband have a more equal marriage.”34
Things worked out great for Jen Holleran, but the position she leaned into undermines the position of hundreds of other women—Newark school teachers. A core goal of Startup: Education was to institute a merit pay program for Newark’s teachers. The program, which Sandberg played a central role in designing, rewarded “highly effective” teachers who produced high standardized test scores with bonuses while simultaneously putting teachers whose students performed poorly on track for disciplinary action or dismissal.35
Hundreds of teachers who have been deemed “unsatisfactory” are being kept on payroll as substitute teachers and rotated between Newark�
�s seventy schools while city officials and Newark school reformers use Startup and other funds to develop a buyout program similar to programs used in New York and Houston. The long-term goal is to reduce the number of tenured teachers, keep the remaining ones on their toes with merit pay and weakened tenure rights, and bring in new short-term teachers through programs like Teach For America.
Jen Holleran achieved success at work and fulfillment at home, but her personal gain came at the expense of other women trying to defend their own gains and improve their schools in a complex, difficult environment. Her story highlights how the pursuit of individual success within the existing structures of social and economic power can be great for one woman, but on a broader scale undermine the struggles of other women and bolster the gendered and racialized division of labor in our society.
Feminism as Ideology: The Need for a Collective Vision
The enthusiasm of Fortune 500 companies like Walmart (a company sued for discrimination against women) for the Lean In message demonstrates how neatly Sandberg’s story dovetails with companies’ desire to have bright, hard-working, ambitious employees. Women’s success makes the existing agenda of corporate power appear both just and justified. By providing a pathway for women to advance and mouthing their support for vague notions of gender equality, companies, and the broader capitalist economy, appear meritocratic and even benevolent—a place where anyone (man or woman) who works hard enough will succeed.
As we have seen over the past three decades of neoliberalism, globalization, and financialization, the tendency within capitalism is to polarize not unite, to create divisions not equality. Capitalism has inherent contradictions that pit workers against the companies that employ them and against each other. Workers’ wages come directly from the profits of companies. When competition between firms increases (as it always does) companies look to their wage bill for savings by paying their workers less, slashing their benefits, and making them work harder and longer.
The New Prophets of Capital Page 3