Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

I thought this book was beneath me: I could give an hour lecture on the problems facing the women's right movement today; this book was for women who didn't even know that they're feminists.

For years, as a woman doctor, I shied away from Women in Medicine groups, because having been a female computer scientist and facing the very overt sexism that occurs in the C.S. world, I thought that there was nothing to complain about in medicine. But the further I got in medicine, especially once I had my daughter, I realize all of the subtle ways that its there: the encouragement to leave before you leave; the lack of high-powered female mentors, and the overall relative dearth of women in leadership and highly academic positions. So I joined a national committee on women in medicine and science and at the same time I read this book.

And it's amazing. Sheryl Sandberg gives easy language for the problems I know we face: “sit at the table” for the confidence issues that professional women have; “lean in” and “don't leave before you leave” for the self-selection that occurs. She talks about the seductive message the feminism's work is done that leads to increasing amounts of this subversive sexism (which is the temporal equivalent of the same illusion I fell under switch from C.S. to medicine.) She addresses the hard issues: the linguist quirks that make women seem less confident and the social norms that prevent women from being assertive, both of which put women into a damned if you do/damned if you don't position.

But this is not just a book on contextualization. Sandberg gives concrete advice to women that is useful for women in all fields. She focuses on helping women become top business officers, but its helpful advice to anyone. And she does this without ignoring the importance of being a parent for women who want to parent – and I think this part gets lost among the rhetoric for a lot of people. One of my close friends hates this book, because she says that Sandberg doesn't believe in the importance of mothering, but that's not a correct assertion. Sandberg spends many pages talking about how she decided to take from 5:30-bedtime off from work (offline, off everything) almost all nights because that's what's right for her family. She talks about a woman who joined the Biden administration but on the condition that she goes home for dinner every single night. This is advice on how to set your priorities and then make them happen – dropping the hysteria that comes from assuming that in order to be successful, you have to make sacrifices on someone else's terms.

Sandberg makes it clear that you can't “have it all,” but you can choose what you get to have, and I think that's the best message possible.