Feminism 2.0 (Sheryl Sandberg Feminist “Lean In” Author vs Anne-Marie Slaughter, Princeton professor and former top State Department official) Memes for Worker Bees
This represents a Hobson’s Choice. The absence of a third way, a traditional wife and mother role from this debate seems to assume that is an impossible or passe, old fashioned choice.
Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook, Silicon Valley executive manager and author of “Lean In”, sponsored, launched, or interviewed by
Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, at the offices of the Bloomberg Foundation, on East 78th Street, NY, NY
CBS Program, “60 Minutes”
Time Magazine,
“Makers,” a new documentary on feminist history,
Debora L. Spar, president of Barnard College, who invited Ms. Sandberg to deliver a May 2011 commencement address about gender in the workplace
Cosmopolitan magazine ( which is publishing a 40-page supplement to its April issue devoted to Ms. Sandberg’s ideas, and plan to spread her message to community colleges),
Jill Abramson, the executive editor of The New York Times,
Rachel Sklar, founder of a networking list for women in technology, who is on the Lean In launch committee,
and many other mainstream media outlets plus,
World Economic Forum in Davos, Ms Sandberg spoke on the topic at the World Economic Forum in Davos last month.
Sheryl Sandberg, “Women in management positions show less flexibility to move to other companies and new areas of responsibility than men, which hampers careers. Little American boys can imagine becoming president, but little American girls cannot.”
vs
Anne-Marie Slaughter (Princeton professor and former senior adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton)
Sandberg’s focus, women’s lagging ambition vs. men (“We will never close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap,” she has said), “is a much, much smaller problem than our social and political structures,” Slaughter contends. Sandberg’s message, she adds, “isn’t taking account of the full spectrum of women who are not superhuman and rich. Sheryl Sandberg is both superhuman and rich.”
and
Atlantic Magazine article titled, “Why Women Can’t Have It All,” last year arguing that feminism — and Ms. Sandberg — were holding women to unattainable standards.
Women Don’t Need to “Lean In” More; Powerful Men Need to Reach Out , Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, a consultant who works with companies to improve their gender balance.
Fortune magazine, Slaughter vs. Sandberg: Can women have it all?
By Patricia Sellers June 25, 2012, “Is this a “face-off,”, as the New York Times proclaimed, between two elite, superstar women about what is right or wrong with workaday lives and careers? “It’s a debate about how we solve a common problem,”….. “Since then, both women quietly developed perhaps the most notable feminist row since Ms. Friedan refused to shake Gloria Steinem’s hand decades ago.”
Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique,” and Gloria Steinem’s MS magazine worked for the same goal, their methods squabbles not withstanding caused great upheavals of traditional human society were two sides to the coin of male/female work place relations, occupations, and personal relations.
(In a related development the Queen of England at age 86 has just this week announced her support for gender equality thereby opening up the throne to women succession. I wonder why the “old girl”, is doing this at this late date? Speculate, speculate, speculate………in any case there is only one crowned head at a time, not much room at the top…….anywhere in the world, is there?)
And finally that reminds me. There are few corner offices and even fewer penthouse offices for anyone to attain. So why train so many for the race to the top at all? Is it a question of conditioned obedience to the corporate model?
worker bees?
Yes, that must be it. I like honey quite a lot, but I’m not envious of those creatures at all, bee society doesn’t appeal to me in the least! But UN Agenda 21 proponents think the hive is grand. Yet that is a failed philosophy built upon a reprobate misunderstanding of the very nature of humans. In the end we aren’t bees and can never be contained in the planned communities Agenda 21 daydream.
What few women and men attain to the lofty goals of both Ms Sandberg and Professor Slaughter might examine whether the sacrifices they advocate to get to the CEO Suite give life meaning or simply lead to regrets of lost opportunities for more valuable experiences in the wider world of existence for the sake of breath itself.
I don’t believe many were meant to rule, the air is too thin for most up there on the top floor. Even if you reach Mt. Everest you can’t live there very long and would you, if you could……in any event it’s the climb and the companions that make for a successful contented happy life, and sometimes its the view, but often even that is obscured, then a kind word and a hot cup of coffee or tea would make all the difference……………
materread 