Why is lean in controversial

In , Sandberg spoke frankly about how women weren't necessarily much better off for it. Back to Obama, though. View on Twitter. She also talked about the section in the book that addresses how she and Obama went to marriage counseling.

In the coming years, I started to turn my journalistic attention toward working mothers. For women who have children during the prime childbearing years of 25 to 35, their earnings never recover, and their salaries often drop precipitously after having a kid.

I believe telling mothers to raise their hands and try harder in the open sea of hostility we face in the workplace is like handing a rubber ducky to someone hit by a tsunami. I think it also inadvertently encourages us to internalize our own discrimination, leading us to blame ourselves for getting passed over for raises, eased out of jobs, not getting called for job interviews, and being denied promotions.

I now believe the greatest lie of Lean In is its underlying message that most companies and bosses are ultimately benevolent, that hard work is rewarded, that if women shed the straitjacket of self-doubt, a meritocratic world awaits us. My own life, and my research and reporting, along with interacting with hundreds of mothers in the past two years, has convinced me this is untrue. Today, I think my previous warm embrace of corporate feminism has allowed me to reject it more thoughtfully and try to seek out something different.

My hard fall off the ledge of leaning in forced me to reinvent my career. But I still have tons of ambitions. Kamala Harris and Rep. Workers in the fast-food industry and at Google have organized walkouts to fight sexual harassment. Women are realizing that looking out for each other is even more powerful than just looking out for ourselves.

Katherine Goldstein is a journalist and the creator of a reported podcast called The Double Shift , about a new generation of working mothers, out in Find her on Twitter kgeee. Do you have a story to share? Read our submission guidelines , and pitch us at firstperson vox. The group of Duke University psychology professors summarized their recent findings in Harvard Business Review. During a series of six studies involving 2, 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.

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, according to the report, the mantra of "lean in" might prompt people to view women not only as the solution to the problem, but also as the cause of it. That being said, the team added that their findings required independent replication in order to be considered anything other than initial results.

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. She gained 70 pounds, her feet swelled two shoe sizes and she vomited every day for nine months. I read this and I thought immediately, she gets it.

Sandberg marshals plenty of statistics to support this fact. In , women earned just 77 cents for every dollar men made. Her solution: negotiate like a man. When she was talking to Mark Zuckerberg about joining Facebook, she says she was inclined to accept the first offer he made. But after her husband encouraged her to make a counter-offer, she did and Zuckerberg came back to her with a much more lucrative proposal.

She also notes a McKinsey study showing that while men are promoted based on potential, women get a leg up based on past accomplishments.

Indeed, this is the part of the book that still gives me pause. I believe that personal motivation is an incredibly complex thing, molded by our internal will but also strongly influenced by the parenting we receive, the peer group that surrounds us as we grow, the educational opportunities we get, the connections we make, as well as the expectations and prejudices of those around us.

Sandberg agrees, at least in part. She cites more than a dozen studies that underline the obstacles women face. One of the most compelling, though 10 years old, still rings true. Two professors wrote up a case study about a real-life entrepreneur named Heidi Roizen, describing how she became a successful venture capitalist by relying on her outgoing personality and huge personal and professional network.

When a woman does well, people like her less.