What Sheryl Sandberg’s ‘Lean In’ Has Meant to Women

“It felt like an amazing blueprint for how to think about my life going forward,” said Ms. Goldstein, author of the newsletter The Double Shift.

But after Ms. Goldstein gave birth, struggled to parent a child with health problems and subsequently lost her high-profile media job, the book’s advice started to ring hollow. “It’s helpful for me now as an intellectual foil of what I don’t believe anymore and don’t want to be,” she said.

For all the backlash that “Lean In” eventually sparked, there were millions of women who saw some of their own potential in Ms. Sandberg’s megawatt success.

“I always refer to it as a before-after situation,” said Rachel Sklar, an entrepreneur who served on the launch committee that promoted “Lean In” before its release. “It became a shorthand for a problem that had previously been known about and not named.”

To Ms. Sklar, some of the criticism aimed at Ms. Sandberg since her book’s publication has felt excessive. “Male business leaders write books all the time, and they just fly under the radar on how their books stand the test of time,” Ms. Sklar said.

And Ms. Sandberg faced even greater scrutiny as public perception of her company dimmed. When Facebook came under fire for its role in the spread of misinformation during the 2016 election, some of the public’s ire was directed toward Ms. Sandberg, who was responsible for the policy and security team. In 2018, she was faulted for some of the fallout from the data breach scandal involving Cambridge Analytica. On top of that has come research indicating that Instagram, which Meta owns, has had toxic effects on the mental health of teenage girls. Some felt that Ms. Sandberg’s public message remained too focused on individual ambition and achievement, and not on the social value of the company she was leading.

“Not everything should be leaned into,” said Rosa Brooks, 51, a professor at Georgetown University’s law school, adding that Ms. Sandberg’s leadership tenure raised deeper questions about her workplace philosophy. “It’s not just ‘How do I succeed on the terms of the workplace?’ but ‘How do I change the workplace, and make it a force for good?’”

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/06/02/business/sheryl-sandberg-lean-in.html