In business, “leaning in” means taking opportunities and striving for leadership roles. The term was popularized by Sheryl Sandburg’s 2013 book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. Sandburg, the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook, argues that women should be more assertive in pursuing top roles and recognition in the workplace.
Sandburg, a mother of two, is viewed as a model for the new age of integrating professional advancement with motherhood, a subject of endless strife and anguish for modern women. Women now compromise the majority of the college-educated workers and are attending and graduating from college in record numbers, increasingly surpassing men. Women began entering the workforce en masse in the 1960s. In the following decade, according to data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the growth rate of the women’s labor force exceeded three percent per year. In the 1970s to 1980s, the growth rate for women in the workforce reached 3.7 percent per year, twice the growth rate for men in the workforce during that period.
The explosive growth of women leaving roles as full-time homemakers and caregivers and entering the workforce meant that from 1950 to 2000, there were significant demographic shifts in the American workplace. In 1950, about one in three women worked, and by 1998, approximately three in five women were working. Despite what would be described as significant gains in female employment, there remains a dearth of women in top leadership roles.
Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In is a full-throated response to the lack of women in elite positions and a rallying cry for empowered women in the workplace. The book has been regarded as a “sort-of feminist manifesto,” and initially received a lot of positive press. The book quickly became a bestseller, totaling 74,000 sales in a single week. From there, the book held a spot on the New York Times best-seller list for more than a year and has sold more than 4.2 million copies.
The book’s launch and success spawned Lean In Circles, described by the book’s official website as “small groups of women who meet regularly to learn new skills, network, and encourage each other.” The website further characterizes the regional groups as places “where women can be unapologetically ambitious, give voice to our dreams and get the push we need to start chasing them.” While the hype and cheerleading tone may not appeal to everyone, the groups have certainly attained wide appeal with more than 44,000 active Lean In Circles in more than 170 countries to date.
Even though Sandberg’s work received such commercial and critical success, the book has faced mounting criticism. If the goal of Sandburg’s philosophy is simply to get women in leadership roles, then the endeavor has certainly been a failure. Sandberg herself admitted as much in 2019. “In terms of women in leadership roles, we are not better off,” she told USA Today. “We are not seeing a major increase in female leadership in any industry or in any government in the world, and I think that’s a shame.”
Although Sandberg continues to stand by her strategy of commitment to ambition and vocal self-promotion in the workplace as the road forward for women, some are questioning her approach. Former-First Lady Michelle Obama delighted Sandberg’s critics after her comments on Lean In while promoting her memoir. She told a full audience at an event in Brooklyn, “I tell women, that whole ‘you can have it all’ — nope, not at the same time; that’s a lie.” She continued, “It’s not always enough to lean in, because that s— doesn’t work all the time.”
Other critics turned their grievances with Sandberg’s work into bragging in the guise of complaining. For example, Rosa Brooks, law professor at Georgetown University, accused Sandberg’s philosophy of “ruining life for the rest of us.” Brooks claims that after following Sandberg’s advice in her career and personal life, volunteering to manage time-sensitive, complex projects at work and taking on added responsibilities in her community and children’s activities, she found “I was miserable. I never saw my friends, because I was too busy building my network. I was too tired to do any creative, outside-the-box thinking. I was boxed in. I wondered if foreign-policy punditry was just too much for me. I wondered if I should move to Santa Fe and open a small gallery specializing in handicrafts made from recycled tires. I wondered if my husband and kids would want to go with me.” Brooks concludes that she needs space and time in her life to pursue creativity that “leaning in” doesn’t allow for. Of course, Sandberg’s philosophy doesn’t promise free time, it claims to bring success.
Obama’s and Brooks’ critique of “leaning in” is not new. Other advocates for women in the workplace have argued for decades in favor of “sequencing,” by which they mean choosing to prioritize motherhood during one’s late 20s and 30s, taking time out of the mainstream labor force or cutting back to a part-time role in those early years, and focusing on career advancement once one’s children are older. Also termed “sequentialism,” the strategy received vitriolic criticism from the likes of Betty Friedan, and many people have since noted the sacrifice to career opportunity that comes with “stepping back” as opposed to “leaning in.”
Sequencing gained popularity with the publication of Arlene Rossen Cardozo’s book by that title in 1986. Cardozo says of her book, “Women wanted something that said it was OK to leave.” She added, “I do think it is a very good answer to the superwoman myths.” By “superwoman” Cardozo means what she describes in her book as a “120-hour-a-week dual-lifer.” In contrast to this, Cardozo proposed taking a leave of a few years to be at home with children. In recent years Cardozo has modified her advice, saying women should remain engaged at least part-time while raising children because reentry to the workforce can be challenging after a hard break.
The sequencing strategy received a great deal of criticism, much of it painfully personal, because such a strategy necessitates a spouse who is the sole or primary bread winner for a time. For mothers who unexpectedly find themselves divorced, the financial consequences can be harsh and hard to overcome. Additionally, exiting and reentering the workforce is challenging for many people, and the transition can take much longer than people sometimes anticipate.
Sandberg’s work is in part a rejection of the idea that mothers need to or should hold back in any way at work while expanding their families and pursuing goals outside of work. In contrast to sequencing, the leaning in approach is to remain full-throttle whether you have children at home or have them safely launched. Whether this approach leaves room for free time is another question.
Other women became disillusioned with Sandburg’s philosophy after difficult personal circumstances took a toll. One writer, Katherine Goldstein, described herself initially as a Sandberg “superfan” who viewed Lean In as “a cross between a playbook and a bible.” In an article for Vox, Goldstein describes following Sandberg’s philosophy by pursuing a high-powered, demanding position even while hoping to have her first child. While she initially appeared to be successful, Goldstein ultimately found the lifestyle untenable. She writes, “But not only did my Lean In devotion not prepare me for the challenges I faced in the coming years as a new mom, its rose-colored doctrine also supplied me with plenty of damaging illusions.”
When Goldstein’s son was born with significant but treatable health challenges, Goldstein found she was unable to meet the demands she felt to keep up in the office and care for a medically fragile baby. Shortly after this difficult entry into full-time working motherhood, Goldstein lost her job and suffered a crisis of confidence that caused her to question the wisdom of Sandberg’s philosophy. In the face of limitations, both social and economic, telling women to try harder in the workplace can seem an inadequate response.
Like Goldstein, other critics of Lean In point to fact that family obligations can prevent career flourishing, even if women are doing all they can. It’s clear that Sandberg for her part has not made light of her family duties. After the sudden and unexpected death of her husband in 2015, Sandberg’s duties at home undoubtedly increased. Sandberg wrote in a Mother’s Day tribute in 2016 how much she did not realize about the challenges of being a single mother until suffering the loss of her husband. Her post received praise, but many pointed out that while Sandberg admits to underestimating the challenges of “leaning in” at work while facing serious struggles at home before becoming a single mother, she cannot relate to the financial realities that most single mothers face in addition to the challenges of raising children alone.
Sandberg has spoken at length and written a book, Option B, about the experience of grieving her husband’s sudden death and leading her children through the trauma to find resilience. Sandberg’s account of a day on which she attended her son’s school concert and realized acutely the irremediable absence of her children’s father and then, despite being extremely emotionally distraught, had to host an important work dinner at her house, is the stuff of nightmares. There is a reason that losing a spouse or having a child suffering from illness sometimes prompts people to take a step back from their career. As Sandberg seems to suggest in Option B, continuing to “lean in” at work and at home following the devastating loss of her husband is part of cultivating resilience and moving forward. But that path is not always necessary, and it is not for everyone.
Although the strategy has come to be known derogatorily as “the mommy track,” many family-oriented women continue to advocate for sequencing. While it is now well established that re-entry into the full-time workforce comes with lost earning capacity and professional possibilities, the reality is that those drawbacks are sometimes worth the calculated risk. Understanding that becoming the sole breadwinner is a possibility can prompt the purchase of a good life insurance policy and maintaining part-time or freelance work to compensate for the increased financial risk. Staying in touch with professional contacts can offset some of the professional disadvantages of stepping back for a time.
While the theory of a thoroughly modern, two-income household with meticulously divided “co-parenting” may seem like the dream, it remains merely a dream for many. One lawyer and mother of two young children included a harrowing daily schedule in her departure memo describing the competing demands of working at a big law firm and being the primary caregiver at home. The woman, identified only as “Mrs. X,” wrote, “Needless to say, I have not been able to simultaneously meet the demands of career and family, so have chosen to leave private practice, and the practice of law (at least for now). I truly admire all of you that have been able to juggle your career and family and do not envy what a challenge it is trying to do each well.”
While many women remain skeptical of sequencing, for some it is a realistic alternative to Sandberg’s no-holds-barred approach to winning at work and attaining leadership positions as a priority. While acknowledging the drawbacks of sequencing, one Australian mother and professor writes about some of the unexpected benefits of approaching a career track in an unconventional way.
Leonie Westenberg writes, “Apart from the value I felt that mothering contributed to my sons, there was, indeed, an intellectual advantage. When I talk now with other academics, and I mention connections between our classes and great literature, or even contemporary literature, I am often called ‘well-read.’ I am asked to suggest literature for further reading.” Westenberg says this wide-ranging intellectual background is a direct result of her unconventional career path. She adds, “I attribute this literary knowledge and imagination to the time I had for reading — wide reading — in my time-out years of mothering. I was not consumed by reading only in my area of specialization, or only for my thesis, or in preparation for classes that I would teach in the forthcoming semester. I had time to explore — or explore again — the great books…”
Sandberg’s Lean In presents a strategy for career and life that has won great praise and many ardent fans. In the years since the publication of Lean In, Sandberg has also had a growing number of critics. Apart from people who take issue with Sandberg’s philosophy, there are also a number of women who have presented an alternative to pursuing leadership in the workplace that better suits their priorities and broader life goals. Whether Sandberg’s take is compelling or not, women ultimately have to make choices that take into account their personal circumstances and accept the risks and rewards that they want to live with.
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