This is not a bad article per se, and I don’t know enough about Sheryl Sandberg to say something about her either way, but as someone quite invested in opportunity and equality in business these types of “woman beating the men at their own game”-portraits always do strike me as feeding into a harmful narrative and perpetuating the myth that the game isn’t inherently rigged in itself but merely needs a better PR campaign.
Because most “making it in business” profiles can ultimately be boiled down to two major aspects — ambition as the key to success, and financial profit as gauging the degree to which this has been achieved. That leaves you with quotes such as:
Until women are as ambitious as men, they’re not going to achieve as much as men…
What does that even mean? Men want to be 100% successful and women only 62%? They just have to “want it” more and then everything will be a-ok?
The key is that when we say ambition what we really mean is ruthlessness. Show me the entrepreneurial profile that doesn’t glorify its protagonist’s hyper-competitiveness (“Even in kindergarten, he cried when he didn’t make the prettiest finger-painting”) and waxes lyrical about how driven that particular asshole is. So is it really that women should adapt to the current business culture to be successful and to combat inequality or should we look at what’s wrong with current business culture and change that?
I mean, it’s great for her that a Facebook IPO will possibly make her a billionaire (on paper) but that doesn’t automatically make her a good person, does it? Not that she is not - I don’t know, really - but surely whether she’s a billionaire or not is not the ultimate gauge of her character.
Similarly, kudos for her graduating at top of her class in Harvard, but again, that mostly implies she is very good at studying business and not that she is very good at being a decent person.
I’m not foolish enough to suggest that financial and academic success should not be important parameters in any managerial profile but that maybe we ought to look at what “success” really is and means and stop celebrating false idols.
Lastly:
The most important career choice you’ll make is who you marry.
I think that’s very problematic advice, at best.