Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg's "sort-of-feminist manifesto" doctrine that purports to give women the tools to advance professionally. The "Leaning In" doctrine can be distilled into two sentences in her chapter "The Leadership Ambition Gap": "not only can women have both families and careers, they can thrive while doing so,” Sandberg writes. "Without fear, women can pursue professional success and personal fulfillment — and freely choose one, or the other, or both". Sandberg argument centers on the choices individual women make. In her chapter "Make Your Partner a Real Partner," Sandberg asserts that the "revolution [of splitting parenting duties between two partners] will happen one family at a time". Sandberg's self-proclaimed "sort-of feminist manifesto" fits perfectly into a neoliberal framing of the world, in which individuals are responsible for everything that happens to them and for their own happiness.

For this reason, she has received much criticism about the limited audience to whom her "manifesto" applies -- Sandberg is very much writing for white, wealthy women in the corporate sphere. She is not addressing the problems faced by, for example, the housekeepers who work at the DoubleTree in Cambridge or the manicurists in New York salons who work for just a few dollars a day, if any money at all. These women do not have the luxury of "choice" -- they are working these jobs not because they want to, but because they have no choice not to. In Leaning In, Sandberg ignores the structural inequities women face and the way gender discrimination intersects with racism, xenophobia, socioeconomic discrimination, and more.