Betty, Marissa and Sheryl have been getting buzz in the past few weeks, the three women (Friedan, Mayer and Sandberg, respectively) serving as a neatly packaged opportunity to discuss that age-old question: Why aren’t women getting ahead?
Fifty years after Friedan wrote her groundbreaking book, “The Feminine Mystique,” which talked about the boredom of educated suburban housewives, Facebook COO Sandberg has unleashed a controversial book called “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead” about the importance of having more women in power — just as one such woman, Yahoo! CEO Marissa Mayer, forbade telecommuting at her company in a move that has sparked widespread outrage, especially among working moms.
There has been the requisite hand-wringing, some good, old-fashioned feminine mud-slinging (who doesn’t love it when attractive women do something mean?) and bemoaning of the fact that after all this time, men still hold the majority of leadership roles at corporations.
Why is this still the case? Well, among other things, Sandberg argues that women make decisions early in their career that sabotage them later. Because they may someday have a family, they choose the less time-intensive medical practice or the legal path that requires less overtime. If they kept their foot on the gas, they would have the corner office.
But what happens when you do have kids? Part of the solution, Sandberg counsels, is having a partner that will do their equal share of taking care of the kids and house.
Perhaps Sandberg could launch a dating service after her book tour is over, because it sounds like she has met some incredible men. Unfortunately, most guys haven’t yet caught up to Sandberg’s vision. As Allison Pearson put it in her novel “I Don’t Know How She Does It,” dark social commentary masquerading as chick lit, “They could give you good jobs and maternity leave, but until they programmed a man to notice you were out of toilet paper, the project was doomed.”
While equal parenting can certainly work when the children are older, until men have the ability to lactate, women will continue to bear the brunt — physically and professionally — of taking care of babies and toddlers. And most men are just as concerned with getting ahead in their own careers to take a back seat while their wife “leans in” at work.
The majority of American women don’t live in Sandberg’s high-powered corporate world, or Friedan’s 1960s “Mad Men” suburbia of frustrated housewives. And they certainly don’t live in Marissa Mayer’s world, where you get to build your own personal nursery, a sort of Petit Trianon, in your office while running a huge company and telling other working parents at said company that they can eat cake — but they can’t eat that cake at home.
In fact, most American women don’t have what they would refer to as careers. A career implies a series of thought-out steps, a larger plan in place, goals. Instead, they have jobs. Jobs they show up for, struggle through and worry about losing, knowing that if they do, they have little or no safety net.
It’s commendable that Sandberg made a point to leave at 5:30 to have dinner with her family while working in top positions at Google and Facebook. But leaving at 5:30 is the privilege of someone in charge, a shot caller.
While Sandberg admits that she is addressing a privileged group, the kinds of discussions that the book has sparked are tinged with class arrogance and cheerful obliviousness. Feminism has always been criticized for being exclusive, but now, with the gap between rich and poor wider than it has ever been in this country, it’s irresponsible to continue to focus on what amounts to a kind of trickle-down economics of feminism, this assumption that the biggest problem facing women is the fact that there aren’t more of us in senior-level corporate jobs.
Mayer and Sandberg got rich enough early enough to solve their own child-care problems. But there are plenty of industries where being successful doesn’t give you enough money to build your own nursery, plenty of professions where leaning in won’t solve a thing.
Sandberg and so many others keep the emphasis on all the things women could be doing to pull themselves up individually, the larger issues remain ignored.
Issues like the lack of nationwide affordable day care, which came close to being a reality with the Comprehensive Child Development Bill of 1971. It was passed by Congress, then vetoed by President Nixon in 1972 because he felt it would encourage more women to work outside the home.
We’ve all seen that sad map that tracks countries with mandatory paid maternity leave — which includes every nation except for Suriname, Liberia, Palau, Papua New Guinea, Nauru, Western Samoa, Tonga . . . and the United States.
The Family Medical Leave Act is a joke, crumbs tossed to employees who are evidently supposed to be grateful for the right to take up to 12 weeks of unpaid leave after the birth of a child — and wherein pregnancy and birth are noted as a “disability” on insurance forms.
The fact is, most mothers don’t give up work; work gives them up, and so does the country, by making it too inflexible, too expensive, for them to continue working.
I’m leaning in just fine, Sheryl, but who’s got my back?
Mackenzie Dawson is a contributing features editor at The Post.