Sandberg and Mark Zuckerberg went on the attack, digging up dirt on critics and peddling conspiracy theories aggressively. Recently, Facebook admitted that Sandberg ordered senior Facebook staff to research George Soros’s finances and holdings, and ordered up opposition research from the Republican-linked Definers Public Affairs company, after the financier publicly criticized the company in a speech at the World Economic Forum. That image has taken a battering in the last few weeks, with Facebook increasingly attacked for playing fast and lose with users’ data, and for accusations that the site has unduly influenced democratic elections and inflamed racial tensions that have led in some cases to extreme violence. The Sandberg image is carefully calibrated to appear nonthreatening, hard-working, and friendly: her goal is to help people, and she just happens to be a crucial cog in the biggest social media company in the world. An individualist looking to get ahead will always rely on class interests and links with other successful colleagues rather than solidarity with colleagues of the same gender. The US offers none.įocusing on individual behavior as the sole source of success and failure lets structural sexism in the business world entirely off the hook. Women have a tendency to mentally check out of their workplace in the late stages of pregnancy, Sandberg opines but she fails to mention that the United States has some of the weakest maternity leave rights in the world: in the forty-two countries that comprise the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, women are given an average of eighteen weeks of maternity pay. The problem, apparently, is that women hold themselves back. But this form of feminism is entirely individual, with no blame apportioned for workplace disputes or the attitudes of the entirely male executives Sandberg dealt with. Lean In was remarkably successful, with accessible prose and promises of greater success for readers if they acted on Sandberg’s advice. But in Sandberg’s anecdote, they remain entirely invisible.
The tale is designed to show how few women had reached her position - but is far more revealing than that: plenty of women would surely work in the office, providing the coffee and sweeping the floors. Sandberg asked where the women’s bathroom was, and none of the all-male office occupants knew.
Pitching a deal, a senior figure suggested a break for refreshments. In Sheryl Sandberg’s business-manual-cum-self-help-book Lean In, she recounts an anecdote about a meeting in New York.
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