Years ago, I lived in Minneapolis and Sheryl Sandberg was going to speak there at University of Minnesota. It was maybe 1.5 years after Lean In. I was at a bar (surprise!) the night before her speech, and tons of women had traveled from all over Minnesota and Wisconsin to see her speak. A bunch of them had ended up at the same bar as me. We had a nice spirited discussion about Sandberg, whose work I thought was cool at the time. But even as I thought her work was cool, I was wondering why she basically imposed burnout on women — “be the best mom, but also dominate at work!” — as some marker of success. In terms of her own mothering, didn’t she have an army/phalanx of people that the affluent tend to have? It seemed like a cooked-books narrative, but I guess at the time people were desperate for anything that would lift up women in a business context.
Written by Ted Bauer
I write about a lot of different topics, from work to masculinity to relationships and social dynamics, I.e. modern friendship. Pleasure to be here.