Reply to I'd like to tell Sheryl Sandberg to STFU.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I love her.

I didn't agree with every word of Lean In, but I think the book did a lot to open up the public dialogue about the challenges women face in the workplace. I'm grateful for the conversations it started around me with both male colleagues and female friends.

The organization related to the book does a lot of good educational material like the McKinsey study that shine a spotlight on these issues.

I think the loss of her husband is devastatingly terrible and, regardless of her privilege, I found it admirable that she spoke so publicly about it throughout the grieving process - and now in a book just 2 years later.  I've learned a lot from the book and her posts that has helped me better support grieving friends.

So yeah, she's not perfect and sometimes out-of-touch, but I think she's a pretty impressive person that's done some good in the world.[/quote]
FWIW, it's not like she started these conversations or was the first to give voice to them.  But her position probably did give broader voice to these conversations.  At the same time, whatever her personal relationship with him, Larry Summers is not a woman's advocate and it's inexcusable for her not to discuss it.  The comments he made about women in science were made in a room where the MIT professor who was the first person to study workplace inequality by doing things like measuring the size of offices.  She has benefited tremendously from the work that her "mentor" denigrated publicly.

But my bigger beef with her, and I think it's what bothers many, is that her entire brand of feminism is a form of corporate apology.  She tells people to pushback against workplace culture, but she doesn't really suggest ways to truly change it.  I think Anne Marie Slaughter's book (which also reflects a certain privilege) provides a valuable counterbalance to Sandberg's perspective.

FWIW, I'm a woman who works in tech.  I've seen Sandberg speak at the biggest annual conference for women in tech, Grace Hopper Conference, and she comes across as a fool sitting on the stage with women who have fought extreme bias and also worked to transform culture the hard way.  This was before her DH died, and I do understand she's changed her thinking a bit.  But it felt at the time like she was happy to be given credit for others' hard work in the trenches.[/quote]

Well-said.  As for the new book on grief, look, nobody could not be moved by her story of loss.  Beyond that, however, it basically seems like a repackaging of fairly superficial concepts about grief and resilience -- see this WaPo interview with her co-author:  https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/on-leadership/wp/2017/04/25/the-leadership-lessons-in-sheryl-sandbergs-and-adam-grants-new-book-about-resiliency-and-grief/?utm_term=.49a9c6a2beda.

I have a close friend who's a grief counselor, working primarily with kids.  Her take on the book is that Sandberg is bringing some attention and financial support to these issues, but, as with Lean In, she's a bit tone-deaf.  While she now says that she understands why many women felt that Lean In was unrealistic about what life is like for workers who aren't super-wealthy CEOs, she still doesn't seem to understand how much her wealth and status have shaped how she and her family have fared during these first two years since her husband's death.  And, on that note, my friend has also said that writing a book about grief after two years doesn't allow for the longer perspective that's really necessary to understand how grief plays out, particularly in the lives of children.            [/quote]

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