There’s lots of good stuff in this essay, most of the main themes I’ve highlighted on this blog before so I won’t repeat them in this post. But there’s something new in this essay that I want to think about some more… and that is the notion that personal anecdotes, which can be very feminist by nature and which I am a big fan of (thus I write a personal blog!), can also be used to build intimacy and sell ideas that maybe we shouldn’t be buying. Personal anecdotes are compelling and difficult to debate.. is that a problem?
Sandberg is most seductive when sharing personal anecdotes. It is these true-life stories that expose the convenient lies underlying most of her assertions that as more women are at the top, all women will benefit. She explains: “Conditions for all women will improve when there are more women in leadership roles giving strong and powerful voice to their needs and concerns.” This unsubstantiated truism is brought to us by a corporate executive who does not recognize the needs of pregnant women until it’s happening to her. Is this a case of narcissism as a potential foundation for female solidarity? No behavior in the real world of women relating to women proves this to be true. In truth, Sandberg offers no strategies for the building of feminist solidarity between women.
She makes light of her ambivalence towards feminism. Even though Sandberg can humorously poke fun at herself and her relationship to feminism, she tells readers that her book “is not a feminist manifesto.” Adding as though she is in a friendly conversation with herself, “okay, it is sort of a feminist manifesto.” This is just one of the “funny” folksy moments in the book, which represent her plain and ordinary approach – she is just one of the girls. Maybe doing the book and talking about it with co-writer Nell Scovell provides the basis for the conversational tone. Good humor aside, cute quips and all, it is when she is taking about feminism that many readers would have liked her to go deeper. How about just explaining what she means by “feminist manifesto,” since the word implies “a full public declaration of intentions, opinions or purposes.” Of course, historically the best feminist manifestos emerged from collective consciousness raising and discussion. They were not the voice of one individual. Instead of creating a space of female solidarity, Sandberg exists as the lone queen amid millions of admires. And no one in her group dares to question how she could be heralded as the “voice of revolutionary feminism.”
How feminist, how revolutionary can a powerful rich woman be when she playfully admits that she concedes all money management and bill paying to her husband? As Sandberg confesses, she would rather not think about money matters when she could be planning little Dora parties for her kids. This anecdote, like many others in the book, works to create the personal image of Sandberg. It is this “just plain folks” image that has been instrumental in her success, for it shows her as vulnerable.
From the brilliant bell hooks at The Feminist Wire with “Dig Deep: Beyond Lean In”. I meant to link to this forever ago and I’m finally catching up on half-written posts now, so….
Wow. That has kind of rocked my world. Thank you so much for posting, however late!
Thanks for sharing this. Your premise on personal anecdotes is very interesting and I look forward to reading your follow-up on this.
With a disclaimer that I have not read the full article, just the excerpt you posted and probably not even that with sufficient focus (I have a sick child next to me and am trying to do some work in parallel) this part bothered me:
“How feminist, how revolutionary can a powerful rich woman be when she playfully admits that she concedes all money management and bill paying to her husband?” If conceding money management to her husband makes Sandberg less of a feminist, what does conceding money making to one’s husband make stay-at-home-mums? Or is “powerful rich” the key issue?
Maybe her target group for “female solidarity” is not as large for a manifesto, but as a woman in a high-tech field I definitely felt the solidarity space in her book (this is not to say that my experience with motherhood/career juggling aligns with hers). And I do realise that women in high-tech, male dominated fields are a minority but shouldn’t feminism welcome minorities?
Full disclosure: not a Sandberg fan. But this is interesting to me – I was going to also comment on “money management and bill paying” as the sine qua non of feminism. Why? Because money is more important than relationships (Dora parties)? As a feminist I reject that assumption. I see money management as a household duty. Or by management are we also meaning “decisions?” That doesn’t seem like a good reading of Sandberg’s words – what are the chances that if Sandberg wants some energy efficient windows in her house she doesn’t get them?
Great article. One anecdote that struck me in the book was how when her husband was CEO of SurveyMonkey (I think it was), he moved the company to the Silicon Valley so that he could be closer to his family. She told this like it was a great thing and was completely oblivious to the situation of the company’s employees and their families.
Mmmmmmm. Having just been shafted in my job by a female boss, who has raised her children and has permanency in her job, right at the point in my career where I need job security to plan to have my own children in a few years, I’m pretty sick of female bosses and keen to try out a male boss again (or even better – no boss). I honestly couldn’t have been treated worse by a paternalistic old dinosaur type. So a lot of what Sandberg says feels irrelevant to me, regardless of whether it’s exhortative try-harder stuff or anecdotes about her life. On paper I fit her description of a high achiever but the difference for me is I’m in these job markets which are insecure and so who cares about female solidarity to get to the top when I’d just like a permanent bloody position?
I was bullied while pregnant by my female boss, who was also a mother.
More sexism and misoginy from the infamous Return of Kings site
http://www.returnofkings.com/22358/10-reasons-why-foreign-women-are-better-than-american-women
If you haven’t signed the petition to remove that site from the internet yet, then please do so now:
http://www.change.org/petitions/www-returnofkings-com-remove-the-article-5-reasons-to-date-a-girl-with-an-eating-disorder
Good news- we got over 12,000 signatures now.