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redqueen

(115,096 posts)
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 12:15 PM Apr 2013

Lean In and One Percent Feminism

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To the extent that having it all means having a brilliant, fulfilling, highly compensated career plus a load-bearing partner and a happy home life, that conversation is dead on arrival for the 99%. Most expect to be driven hard, paid little, burdened by debt and, eventually, cast aside. While leaning in at the managers' meeting might move a woman up the corporate jungle gym, it's not going to change the fundamentally exploitative work environments that require workers, male and female, to be chained to their computers and cell phones during every waking hour, devolving to the pathetic state wherein their identities are co-terminus with their job titles. There's no amount of leaning in that will solve the riddle of how to juggle multiple low-wage jobs plus a family. Nearly every working woman who chooses to have children knows that she will spend years of her life scrambling like a maniac, with a partner or without, figuring out infant and childcare, after-school care, summer activities for when school is out of session, what to do when the cough turns into a fever, etc., etc., etc. However endowed we are with confidence, courage and ambition, short of having the cold, hard cash to solve some of these problems by throwing money (and probably some other woman's labor) at them, it's awfully hard to find the wherewithal to lean in.

Nearly all sectors of the feminist movement figured out a long, long time ago that having it all is not an option in the absence of fundamental societal change in the form of institutional policies and structural supports to, at the very least, lighten the unwieldy and disproportionate care-giving load that women still carry. So what is most striking about Sandberg's book is not that a corporate titan found her feminist voice, but that that voice is such a throwback. The battle over the relationship between personal transformation and social change has already been fought, and fought hard, back in the final quarter of the 20th century. The vast majority of people who claimed any allegiance at all to feminism were clear that, while becoming stronger, more confident women is all to the good, short of substantial society-wide changes - let's just for the heck of it mention universal access to affordable, high-quality childcare and universal paid parenting leave - having it all is an ever-receding illusion that no amount of leaning in will make real.

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This is not about picking unnecessary fights amongst the feminist faithful, and there's no need to hate on Sandberg just because she's chosen to expound on what women should do from an especially comfy perch. If the question is how to achieve better gender balance in the upper echelons of corporate management, Sandberg clearly has a contribution to make. Do women sell themselves short and self-sabotage in the corporate world? No doubt. Will Sandberg's book help them devise strategies to advance their careers? Probably so.

But no need to get it twisted. Lean In is not about feminism in general, but about a very particular brand of feminism that, delusions aside, has nothing whatsoever to do with inspiring a social movement. We need to understand the core features of the brand, and then decide whether to buy in or take a pass.

- Corporatist feminism is fundamentally conservative. It is about conformism to the strictures of corporate culture and requires no qualitative shift in social relations. Instead it requires that those experiencing the impact of inequality and discrimination do some psychological fine-tuning. It is the feminist equivalent of other common story lines about inequality and injustice:

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http://portside.org/2013-03-26/lean-and-one-percent-feminism


I love this woman's voice.
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Lean In and One Percent Feminism (Original Post) redqueen Apr 2013 OP
Best description of a working mom: "scrambling like a maniac, with a partner or without" SunSeeker Apr 2013 #1
i love this. nt seabeyond Apr 2013 #3
k&r Gonna read the whole article as soon as I get a minute. Little Star Apr 2013 #2

SunSeeker

(51,367 posts)
1. Best description of a working mom: "scrambling like a maniac, with a partner or without"
Mon Apr 15, 2013, 01:05 PM
Apr 2013

The author put that very well. I don't have anything against Sandberg, but I don't have the luxury of an en-suite nursery. I, like but a tiny sliver of moms who work outside the home, are already "leaning in" all we can. The best description of my life is this very well done heart attack psa:

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