An Open Letter to Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, in Response to 'Lean In'

Dear Sheryl Sandberg,

I am taking seriously the invitation you extend on page 173 of your book to continue the conversation you have begun with Lean In, on women and leadership.

I waited with great anticipation for your pre-ordered book to arrive at my doorstep on March 11^th, and now that I have read it, I have much to say in response. My acquaintance with your philosophy of female empowerment began with your 2010 TED lecture. Like thousands of other women, listening to your talk kindled in me a general sense of self-empowerment. Your message of “sitting at the table” and “not leaving until you leave” hit home hard as things that I had clearly failed to do well enough in my own life. As a woman, as an emerging writer, and as someone who has straddled both sides of the fence, namely, the stay-at-home and “working woman” sides, I had many perspectives and angles that were begging to be fit into some philosophy. That your philosophy was an imperfect match I attributed to the fact that yours is mostly tailored to suit the woman in the corporate world. There were many contradictions and questions that I knew could not be addressed or clarified in a TED lecture or commencement speech. That is why I waited, truly eager to read what you had to say in the leisure and expanse of a book. I hope you will take my points of reaction to your book in the spirit of someone who wishes the same end-goals for women as you do, albeit from different pathways and perspectives.

As someone who has been “the only woman in the room” far too many times, it is natural that you have begun your efforts at bridging the gender gap in professional achievement by focusing on issues that you have grappled with yourself. Your spotlight on the issue of ambition and leadership roles fills a much-needed gap in the literature of women’s roles in management.  You make a compelling case for targeting the barriers of self-limiting behaviors and internalized stereotypes, because, as you say, “they are under our own control. We can dismantle the hurdles in ourselves today. We can start this very moment.” You offer valuable advise on how to navigate the terrain of the corporate world which is seemingly a minefield for women. Why then has (initial) support for your book not been unanimous? I offer a few explanations and suggestions:

The statistics surrounding the ambition gap (as quoted in your book) are alarming and not easy to interpret. As you point out, there is scant evidence of the ambition gap when graduation rates are taken into account, as girls out-earn boys in degrees at the undergraduate level (57% of degrees are conferred to girls) and at the graduate level (60% conferred to girls.) However, as you also point out, the ambition gap is a gaping morass when one looks at women several years after graduation. Even among Harvard graduates, the percentage of women in full-time jobs ten years after graduation is around 60%, and for women who have two or more children, it’s less than 50%. The ambition gap is therefore a robust phenomenon that’s hard to ignore. But the reasons underlying this gap are not so transparent. One interpretation of these numbers, and the one you favor, is that a few years after taking educational measures that reflect a prior ambition, women give up on their aspirations and “opt out” of careers by succumbing to negative messages and internalized stereotypes. You treat the ambition gap as predominantly an internal issue, and the thesis of your book, as stated in the introduction, is, “We can re-ignite the revolution by internalizing the revolution.” Many have mistakenly interpreted this approach as an indication that you view women as primarily responsible for their lack of a greater presence in roles of leadership.

Another source of criticism for your philosophy stems from the idea that there are many factors that contribute to the notion of ambition.

An alternate interpretation of the dismaying statistics surrounding “opting out” and the ambition gap that must also be given voice is that ambitions may be muted and squashed as a result of inadequate support in the work and home environments. To use the jungle gym analogy, many women who climb onto the jungle gym are forced to jump off when children arrive because their spouses and work environments do not adequately support their new responsibilities. And it’s very difficult to hang on to the bars of the jungle gym while also holding onto a baby or two. Much of the dissent about your book revolves around this issue.

My contention about the ambition gap doesn’t concern your particular approach to remediation, but rather, concerns itself with questions about the studies that generated the alarming statistics in the first place. Were questions in the studies posed in a general manner that assumed the status quo of inadequate infrastructure and stereotypical gender-roles for women? Or, were the questions skillfully worded to tease out only the element of ambition? For example, consider the question: “If you had the requisite infrastructure and support in terms of childcare and other domestic responsibilities (a condition that the average man takes for granted), would you pursue roles of leadership and greater responsibility at work?” My guess is that if the questions in the studies controlled for variables in the environment that are known to put a damper on ambition, the ambition-gap between men and women would be significantly bridged. Thus, the question still remains: Are women truly less ambitious, and more fearful of risks than men are, or are the differences in ambition an artifact of being too aware of the stereotypical gender roles and sub-optimal conditions in which women are expected to sustain a career? Perhaps the best method to fueling ambition in women involves a multi-pronged approach where women are urged and taught to dream big, as your book most certainly does, but to also create a home and work environment where those dreams are sustainable.

Many critics have also pointed out that a top-down method will not spark a movement. I am of the same opinion. In an essay on feminism titled ‘The Problem with Women,’ I wrote: “Top-down solutions are capable only of  ‘trickle-down’ effects, and not capable of larger brush-stroke changes. For a solution to bring about meaningful changes within a single lifetime, it must begin with a broad base that is common to women of all ages, socio-economic, educational and ethnic backgrounds.” That the focus of your book is primarily on educated women in the corporate world is another reason why I think there is such a polarized response despite the fact that everyone with an opinion wants the same end results for women! The media has already identified a Sandberg camp and a Slaughter camp. While I do not wish to add to the growing commentary about these camps, I will state for the record that I, like Prof. Joan Williams, think that you are both right. I see the shortcomings of your philosophy in its scope and not in its content. In other words, if your philosophy could be extended to include all women, you are sure to ignite a movement. To that end, casting the idea of leadership as a way of life rather than a role is imperative. When we cast the idea of ‘leadership’ as a role or position that women should aspire to, we create certain corollaries that develop from that viewpoint: If you are not in a designated leadership role, you are automatically in the category of the less empowered. You are not in control of the wheel. A “worker bee” who is satisfied with her level in the corporate hierarchy is automatically considered a non-leader when external labels of leadership are applied. And when exclusionary criteria are applied to groups within a group, i.e. women in non-leadership positions within the larger cohort of “working women,” there comes about unnecessary divisions among an otherwise homogenous group.

On the other hand, if leadership is viewed as an attitude, a mindset, a philosophy, and a way of life, it doesn’t leave anybody out of its spectrum. And from anywhere on the spectrum, one could still aspire to external roles of leadership.

Part of my eagerness to read your book stemmed from the desire to learn about the theoretical bases of your philosophy. Why, in your opinion, is the female sex beleaguered (other than the fact that she internalizes stereotypes)? Do you subscribe to the Marxist origins of early feminist thought? Or, what, in your opinion, are the historical roots of female oppression? I was especially looking forward to seeing how your senior thesis at Harvard on the economic determinants of social behavior might have informed your current philosophy. I was particularly hopeful that you would address the question of how, when there is a significant wage-gap between partners (a topic closely related to your thesis), the lower-earning partner could “lean in” (without much financial leverage) if doing so meant scaling back for the higher-earning partner? While these issues were not directly addressed in the book, you hinted at your theoretical leanings in your discussion of the “mommy wars” and the phenomenon of many women rejecting the label of ‘feminist.’ I would like to present my own analysis of these two issues.

The phenomenon of the “gender wars” or what the media loves to call the “mommy wars” is a predictable outcome of the way in which we have framed the issue of female empowerment within a broader theoretical framework. While Prof. Joan Williams (as you quote in your book) attributes these conflicts to a clash of identities and a clash of social ideals, I attribute them to the way we perceive gainful employment within the larger theoretical framework of feminist theory. A detailed account of my explorations is delineated in my essay ‘Is Feminism Elegant?’ In that essay, I explore the shortcomings of dominant feminist thought from the viewpoint of the aesthetics of theory. But briefly: The dominant modus operandi of the feminist movement is gainful employment outside the home. This method has been cast as the unique and singularly powerful pathway to female emancipation. In addition, this technique of empowerment is viewed as a principle of empowerment, and not a parameter, or one expression of a higher principle. Thus, by solely viewing women’s work outside the home as a means of empowerment, we have gravely undermined the value of women’s work inside the home - and by extension, the value of the woman herself. Furthermore, because we view the presence of women in the workforce as a manifestation of a principle of feminist empowerment (and not a parameter), we view those who do not practise it, and do not enter the mainstream workforce as somehow not sipping from the cup of empowerment. They are viewed as ideologically indifferent to the general feminist agenda, or worse, ideologically under-developed! Therein lie the attitudes of superiority from the “working moms” and the counter-attacks of attempts to induce guilt by stay-at-home moms. These judgments are thus predictable products of our perception that gainful employment is the singular method of female empowerment. If however, both gainful employment and domestic work were on equal footing in the theoretical framework of feminist theory, the mommy wars would diminish. Thus, to remedy this, perceptions must be changed. We must learn to view all work undertaken by women, domestic and otherwise, as having monetary value.

Like many others, I too reject the labels ‘feminist’ and ‘feminism.’ My objections are on linguistic grounds. A full exploration of my viewpoint can be found on my blogpost ‘The Feminine Mistake.’ In brief, I reject those labels because they have (negative) connotations of being the “other.” As someone who belongs to the group that makes up half the human population, I deeply object to being classified as the other.

In conclusion, I’d like to offer some unsolicited advise: If you hope to ignite a grass-roots movement with your book and with LeanIn.org, you must broaden your message to include ways in which a woman without a job outside the home can assume leadership roles within her domestic precinct. When I heard you say, in one of your speeches, that women need to “sit at the table,” my immediate reaction was to broaden your message to apply to all women: A woman needs to sit at the head of the family dining table, especially if she is the primary domestic worker. Then, when I read your book and saw that you ended chapter eight ‘Make your Partner a Real Partner’ with “We need more men to sit at the table…… the kitchen table,” I thought to myself: Damn - She beat me to the dining table analogy!

Finally, while many in the media are getting dizzy pointing fingers at your standpoint on female empowerment and supposed lack of experience with female oppression, I want to commend you for beginning a conversation and bringing about awareness regarding the intangible barriers that women succumb to in their professional lives. As you are someone in a position of great influence, I hope that you will eventually broaden your message of self-empowerment to target the intangible barriers that suppress the voices of women in their homes and daily lives.

Sincerely,

Nandini Ramakrishna

Is Feminism Elegant?

When the status of women is uniformly sub-optimal, with exceptions of relatively few women in substantial control of their lives (mostly because they began from privileged vantage-points), one needs to examine the driving forces behind female empowerment with renewed scrutiny. This is not to simply criticize these forces, but rather, to ascertain whether there are inherent limitations and road-blocks built into these efforts, and if so, to re-frame and rectify. The larger purpose of such examination is therefore to arrive at better ways to meet the goal of having the “average woman,” whoever she may be, of whatever ethnicity, education and economic background, have a larger say in what direction she would like her life to go.

The attribute of ‘elegance’ is widely used by disciplines both in the so-called hard and soft sciences to describe their own principles and theories in terms of aesthetics. Elegance as an aesthetic criterion is not trivial, nor superficial, for theories can be summarily dismissed because they are “not elegant.” The physiologist Ian Glynn, who wrote an entire book on the aesthetics of theory, titled Elegance in Science: The Beauty of Simplicity, described elegance as follows, in an interview on Inside Higher Ed: “…elegant proofs or theories or experiments possess most or all of the following features: they are simple, ingenious, concise and persuasive; they often have an unexpected quality, and they are very satisfying….. Perhaps the most surprising member in this list of features is the "unexpected quality"; so let me give an example. When Thomas Henry Huxley read Darwin’s account of his theory of evolution by natural selection his comment was "How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!"”

What constitutes elegance in a theory? The hallmark of an elegant theory is one that explains the maximum evidence with minimum effort. Newton’s Laws of Motion, for example, explain a wealth of phenomena both on earth and extra-terrestrially by invoking a mere three laws. Good linguistic theories account for grammatical phenomena in all or most of the world’s known or studied languages. In addition, while doing so, they employ the fewest principles or rules. Elegant theories, in other words, have high explanatory power. However, while explaining, they must also be parsimonious. An elegant theory must therefore be compact, yet all-encompassing. Einstein is believed to have said: “The grand aim of all science…is to cover the greatest possible number of empirical facts by logical deductions from the smallest possible number of hypotheses or axioms…”

I have always found a major goal of the feminist movement, namely, the right of women to equal work and pay to be lacking in something fundamental. But defining what it is has been a challenge. Applying aesthetics of theory to feminist ideology is an attempt at unraveling my objections. Let’s consider parsimony and explanatory adequacy.

    In applying the concept of explanatory power to feminist theory, the goal of a good theory would be to have feminist principles that can be applied to the maximum number of members of the group the theory purports to represent. By the average person’s understanding of the term ‘feminism,’ it applies to all women. Therefore, major principles of feminism must aim to be applicable to all women. A useful yardstick is to check if the tenet would be useful to you, your mother and your grandmother, or you, your boss and your household help. If the principle is hard to apply to any one, it suffers from explanatory inadequacy. It has low explanatory power. This inadequacy may be a result of shoddy language, where imprecise terminology and wording exclude certain demographics, or it may be deep-rooted.

The education of women and the rights of women to equal access to gainful employment are worthy goals of the feminist movement. This is not a critique of those goals, but a critique of the value placed on them. It is well established that education and employment are strongly co-related with the preservation of personal freedoms. This applies equally to both men and women. Financial vulnerability is gender-neutral. The point is that while this gender-neutral mode of personal empowerment may improve the status of the individual (man or woman), it is inadequate in raising the overall status of ‘the beleaguered woman.’

    Gainful employment outside the home is portrayed and perceived as the prime modus operandi of female empowerment. Understandably, in a male-dominated world, where the locus of monetary power resides overwhelmingly in the hands of men, it is natural for parity measures to begin with the assumption that if women were equally prevalent and represented in the workforce as men are, there would be fewer gender-based inequities. This assumption may turn out to be accurate. We will only know when the numbers are equally distributed.

In the meantime, the beaten path to gender equality seems to be overwhelmingly focused on following men blindly down the path of monetarily compensated occupations. If having one’s own remuneration guarantees a woman a way to break free of many areas of subordination, (in a world where power, knowledge and money are so intrinsically related), what’s the problem with it?

Let’s look at it in terms of the criteria for theoretical adequacy. Any “good” method of improving the status of women should theoretically work for women of all socio-economic backgrounds, of all races, and for women from both developed and developing countries - much like how a good linguistic theory accounts for the data in all or most known languages. Gainful, remunerative employment would not apply to many of our mothers and most of our grandmothers. It would not apply to cultures that have mutually exclusive gender roles, where the woman assumes the entire burden of domestic tasks. Gainful employment is too specific to a certain section of women from a certain time-period. One could rectify this by proposing many different principles/methods of operation that applied to women of differing times and backgrounds. However, this would violate the requirement of parsimony. This does not mean that education and lucrative careers are invalid as pathways to empowerment; it indicates, rather, that instead of being a principle of empowerment, it should be viewed as one expression or one parameter of a higher inclusive principle. This higher, inclusive principle would apply to a larger cohort of women, thereby demonstrating greater explanatory power.

Whether an effort is viewed as stemming from a principle or a parameter is not just a matter of labeling and semantics. How something is perceived can and does have far-reaching consequences. If the presence of women in the workforce is perceived as the result of following a principle of empowerment (as opposed to a parameter), those who do not practice it, and do not enter the mainstream workforce are viewed as somehow not sipping from the cup of empowerment. They are viewed as ideologically indifferent to the general feminist agenda, or worse, ideologically underdeveloped! Ask any woman who has chosen to not work outside the home about subtle and sometimes blatant attitudes of superiority from the “working woman.”

    By solely viewing women’s work outside the home as gainful employment, we have gravely undermined the value of women’s work inside the home, and by extension, the value of the woman herself. If you’re a woman with a regular pay-cheque, think about whether you consider yourself slightly superior to a woman who chose to not have a traditional career. If your answer is ‘Yes,’ then you contribute, however subtly, to female oppression.

    So how do we revise our perception? We ought to view women’s work, domestic or otherwise, as having monetary value. More on this issue on another day and another essay. But, I'd like to end with the opening lines from Vivien Leone’s 1970 essay titled ‘Domestics.’

The day I suddenly found out I was a lawful domestic servant I was flat on my back in a hospital bed with 47 stitches in my face and a broken arm in traction, as a result of an auto accident from which my then-husband, the driver, emerged unmarked. A lawyer was telling us that in addition to my own massive suit, hubby would be able to sue for loss of services during my hospitalization and convalescence, although these services, on which a monetary value was being placed, had been performed free of charge throughout a decade of marriage.

That was when it hit me: when you do it for free, you’re a wife; when you do it for money, you’re a maid.