Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg’s said ‘lean in,’ but research casts doubt

Is it time to discard
“lean in”? Or is the mantra still helpful to women in the
workplace?
Thibault Camus/AP
Images

• Facebook‘s Sheryl Sandberg famously
  advocated for women to take charge in the workplace in her 2013
  book “Lean In.”
• Recently, a group of Duke University psychology
  professors conducted studies centering on the
  idea of women “leaning in” at work.
• They found that, while advising women to “lean in” can
  empower individuals, the concept can have a subtle but
  troubling side effect.
• Touting an individual’s professional success as the
  solution to workplace inequality, as opposed to advocating for
  widespread policy change, puts the onus of achieving gender
  equality exclusively on women.
• The concept of “leaning in,” therefore, can function as
  a distraction from the macro-level issues of workplace
  discrimination and exclusionary office policies and promotion
  practices.

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Facebook‘s Sheryl Sandberg changed the
whole conversation around women in the workplace with just two
words: “Lean in.”

The Facebook COO’s famous 2013 book encouraged women to hone
their negotiation tactics, strive to fill leadership roles at
work, and tackle their professional lives full-throttle. The idea
was that, by super-charging their own careers, women could
collectively overcome the gender gap in the office.

Sandberg’s message attracted controversy from the get-go. The Facebook exec
addressed the criticism that her book left out underprivileged
women back in 2016, telling CBS that, “I did not really
get how hard it is to succeed at work when you are overwhelmed at
home.”

But an upcoming report set to be published in the Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology may cast doubts upon whether or
not telling women to “lean in” is a good idea at all.

A series of studies suggests advice to ‘lean in’ is distracting,
at best

The group of Duke University psychology professors summarized
their recent findings in Harvard Business Review.
During a series of six studies involving 2,000 participants, the
researchers sought to compare the effect of encouraging women to
adopt the individualistic, “DIY” approach espoused by the “lean
in” movement and the effect of highlighting the structural and
systemic disadvantages that women face in the workplace.

For the study, participants all read excerpts from “Lean In” and
listened to portions of Sandberg’s TED talks. One group consumed
messages from Sandberg suggesting that women should be more
confident and less risk-averse in the office. The other group’s
excerpts from the Facebook COO’s work highlighted the “structural
and societal factors” that held women back at work.

Participants who read “lean in”-oriented messages from the book—
as opposed to the excerpts indicating a need for broader policy
shifts — were more likely to feel that women ought to solve the
problem of workplace inequality themselves. The research team
wrote in the Harvard Business Review that,
on the positive side, participants exposed to the “DIY” themed
excerpts expressed a belief that women have the power to clobber
workplace inequality, but added that these participants “were
also more likely to believe that women are responsible for the
problem — both for causing it, and for fixing it.”

The group of participants who read “lean in” messaging also were
less likely to support implementing structural changes to help
women better succeed in the workplace.

Essentially, the mantra of “lean in” is a distraction at best,
and subtle, pull-yourself-up-by-your-bootstraps victim-blaming at
worst, according to the report.

The systemic problems facing women in the workplace have no clear
solution

That being said, the team added that their findings required
independent replication in order to be considered anything other
than initial results.

“We are by no means suggesting Sandberg intended to blame women
for inequality,” the team wrote in the Harvard Business Review.

The researchers wrote that Sandberg’s book provides ample doses
of both approaches. Her “lean in” ethos encourages women to
thrive on an individual basis, but Sandberg also includes hard
data and studies highlighting the macro-level workplace problems
that women face across the board.

Myriad factors like biases at the negotiation
table, quiet but widespread sexist assumptions, and the
trade-offs and penalties that come with starting a family factor into workplace
inequality.

One woman’s professional success can pave the way for greater
inclusivity in a specific company or industry. But that doesn’t
mean that broader, systemic shifts in workplace and public policy
aren’t required in order to combat issues like subtle discrimination and restrictive
parental leave policies in the US.

Sandberg herself has spoken out about systemic problems facing
women in the workplace. Last year, she criticized male executives
who appoint token women and minorities to leadership positions as
a band aid for otherwise homogeneous companies, Business
Insider’s Julie Bort reported.

In a 2015
Wall Street Journal op-ed, she also pointed out the double
standard when it comes to assertiveness in the workplace.

“We expect men to be assertive, look out for themselves, and
lobby for more — so there’s little downside when they do it,”
Sandberg wrote. “But women must be communal and collaborative,
nurturing and giving, focused on the team and not themselves,
lest they be viewed as self-absorbed. So when a woman advocates
for herself, people often see her unfavorably.”

And she has commented on the lack of progress for women at work,
although she expressed optimism that a wave of female leadership
in business and politics could be on the horizon.

“Overall, we are not seeing a major increase in female leadership
in any industry or in any government in the world, and I think
that’s a shame,” Sandberg told USA Today.