Empowering Insights: Dissecting Sheryl Sanberg’s "Lean In"

“Women hold thirty-five per cent of senior leadership positions in the world.”

“Only ten per cent of all Fortune 500 company's CEOs are women.”

The statistics don’t lie. Try thinking of a powerful, career-oriented woman as a role model, and you might be able to name three or maybe four. There is no sugar-coating the truth, the power of the world is concentrated at the top, and there is a painfully bitter lack of ladies there. 

Is it because they’re less competent? Absolutely not, believes Sheryl Sandberg, ex-COO of Meta. In fact, she proposes that the lack of women in positions of power is not based on skill, but the systematic raising of women to be nice (read, underconfident), which prevents them from being their best selves at work.

"Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" was Sanberg’s first book which blew up in 2013. It investigates in great detail the struggles of “having it all”, balancing being a mother and an employee, the epidemic of impostor syndrome, the silent ways in which workplace sexism still exists, and most importantly, women holding themselves back. Eleven chapters detail careful research, stories about herself and her fellow women, and often a piece of advice for anyone to try and see for themselves. 

Ambition and confidence are the themes of the first portion of the book. Girls in school are at par with the surrounding boys, but they rarely ever end up reaching heights in the corporate world. This is because in school, obedience is rewarded, whereas progress in a career requires a certain amount of risk and a willingness to lead. Women do not realize that better career prospects and power are not handed out for being good at what you do, they have to be sought after. But workplace stereotypes hold them back. 

Internal bias towards women, another issue mentioned, is rife in the workplace. Sandberg mentions the “Heidi/Howard” experiment. For the same ambitious personalities, students preferred to work with Howard, and not Heidi: a grim reminder that ambition in men is celebrated, but in women, it is received with some discomfort.

Bias starts at the toddler level. Girls are much more likely to be helped out by parents, whereas boys are allowed to explore, fall, and get up again. The effects of this extend into the workplace, in the form of a lack of confidence. 

This issue of confidence plagues everything that women do, and it starts when they are girls. Whether it is girls fretting far more about their grades than boys, girls performing worse on Math tests when they’re reminded that they’re girls, to women not raising their hands despite knowing answers, it is not just external factors that hold women back, it is themselves. 

The act of going out of your way to ask for what you want might make you pushy, and the fear of being disliked is far stronger than the desire to progress. Confidence is key, the book highlights multiple times, and there are ways to ask for what you want without being disliked. 

Sandberg says that when advocating for themselves, women should use “we” instead of “I”. This makes them seem like team players and adds weight to what they are advocating for. Follow this up with a justification. 

On the topic of mentors, she emphasizes the value of an organic relationship. You do not have to run after a mentor. That seems forced and awkward. Instead, excel at what you do, and the right mentor will find you. Go out of your way to connect with people, and discuss your thoughts and problems with them. This will make them an active participant, making it much more likely that they will be interested in the mentorship role for you. In addition, simply asking seniors for advice is sometimes not enough, and your peers can understand, relate and help you where your seniors sometimes can’t.

Sandberg delivers everything with an honest voice. She opens up about her own experiences, her wrong decisions, and what she would do differently. She believes that the first step is talking about it. While the discussion of problems of women in the workforce has always been active, she believes that the feminist revolution has halted. “We stand on the shoulders of the women who came before us, women who had to fight for the rights that we now take for granted,” she writes, and rightfully so. 

The right to education, and the right to vote. The women before us did not fight for women to get scarcer as we went up the success pipeline. The way the world is organized is still catered to men, and Sandberg is very conscious of this, but she also realizes, that with enough “leaning in” by the women of the workforce, then perhaps the wheels of feminism will roll again, and the systematic structure that keeps women nice, quiet, overworked, and underpaid will slowly come undone for future generations. For every woman who reaches the top, women in the entire organization benefit.