Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook is blowing up the air waves this week with media interviews about her new book, “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead”. Her advice to women is be more confident. She says that men attribute their success to their own skills, while women more often say they succeeded because of luck and good mentors. Asked by journalist, Elizabeth Vargas if she was saying that women lack ambition, she replied that ambition is not seen as a positive trait in a woman, as it is in a man. She said that as women climb the corporate ladder they are less liked and historically women have been taught that it is important to be liked.
In April 2004 Anna Fels, penned an HBR article entitled, Do Women Lack Ambition? She came to the same conclusion as Sheryl Sandberg, that it is not a lack of ambition but rather women have been conditioned not to boast or take credit for their accomplishments. Women who behave “ambitiously” are often labeled as pushy or worse.
Not everyone is buying into Sandberg’s prescription for success. The naysayers believe she is too “privileged to preach.” As a billionaire, she has a personal home staff to help with the issue of work-life balance and flexibility. The detractors say that she cannot really relate to the plight of the common woman. Be that as it may, my take is that her conclusions and recommendations are certainly not new. Catalyst, Center for Talent Innovation and the aforementioned HBR article, have researched and written about these disparities for a number of years. My concern is that the situation does not seem to be getting any better.
I am often asked in training sessions if younger women are more apt to be assertive and not deterred by historical gender limitations in thinking and behavior. It does not seem so. Sandberg is a Gen Xer and I am sure many of the women she is observing at Facebook are either X’ers or Y’s. She tells the story of how she was not going to negotiate her salary when she was offered the job at Facebook and her brother-in-law was amazed that she would even think about taking the first offer. Studies show that women, including younger women are in general less likely than their male counterparts to negotiate their salaries.
I don’t think we should kill the message because of how we might feel about the messenger. I applaud Sandberg for keeping these issues front and center. It is one thing to hear statistics from a research report about what holds women back but it is much more powerful to hear the stories of women like her who seemingly have it all. If her story touches even one woman to own her power, then I think it is worth it.
Photo courtesy of Leanin.org
Thanks for these insights, Mary-Frances. I was impressed with Sandberg when I saw her interviewed. And I like the fact that she’s started an organization – LeanIn.org – to keep this message going. When asked about her privileged life, she said it is because she is in this position that she feels she has a responsibility to speak out. “I welcome the debate,” she said. I loved her insight that little girls are often called “bossy,” but boys are rarely identified that way.