If you doubt this, observe that of all the advice Sandberg via Time gives to women, the single piece (in)conspicuously absent from the Time article is the most important: ask for more money. Duh. Ask for less hours. Ask for something real, that can affect your life, instead of the cosmetic, "trappings of power" gimmicks like titles or prestige-- the very things that would appeal most to a narcissistic culture obsessed with broadcasting identity, requiring not just external but visible to others validations of their worth. NB: it's not that Sandberg herself didn't say ask for more money-- she did, e.g. in her book and in the British "Americans are money hungry pigs" Guardian. But that advice cannot appear in Time. What the Time article made a big deal about was that she fought for pregnancy parking spots, that's the progress, you go girl, Sandberg is also fighting for the right to cry at work, Jezebel was right, feminism is moving.and work your way around.
Employers take note, Americans, especially American women, can be easily convinced to forgo money if it's not enough money to be flaunted or if something else can be.
Unfortunately-- and this is exactly the trick of it all-- it sounds crazy to say, "wait for true love!"-- it sounds regressive to say that pushing yourself at work might not be worth trading your family, but that's the trick, the system has framed that question as binary, as if there were no other possibilities, no middle ground. The system has made it so that you can only choose one side, "aspire to be a COO!" or "don't be a COO-- you should be home with your kids!" It is a classic double bind, and you can't ask: for the entirety of my life, these are the only two choices?posted by the man of twists and turns at 3:36 PM on March 22 [9 favorites]
This is a picture of a 'Lean In,' which I assume is why they're all wearing low cut tops. ZING. I can only imagine they are talking about the season finale of The Bachelor...My personal vote for Lean In valedictorian is the woman at the bottom left, I don't know her life or her medication history but she has the diagnostic sign of her cuff pulled up over her wrist in what I call "the borderline sleeve," that girl will have endlessly whipsawing emotions and a lot of enthusiastic ideas that will ultimately result in a something borrowed/something blue. Hope her future ex enjoys drama, he's in for seven years of it.I'm sorry, how is this not rank misogyny?
The system's ideal woman is the single mother, she's produced with her uterus and is willing to go all in on production/consumption, she has no choice. I'm not saying she wants to be a single mother, I'm saying that's what the system wants her to be. That's feminism. You can get married too, as long as he'll make it so you get in at 8.
Unfortunately-- and this is exactly the trick of it all-- it sounds crazy to say, "wait for true love!"-- it sounds regressive to say that pushing yourself at work might not be worth trading your family, but that's the trick, the system has framed that question as binary, as if there were no other possibilities, no middle ground. The system has made it so that you can only choose one side, "aspire to be a COO!" or "don't be a COO-- you should be home with your kids!" It is a classic double bind, and you can't ask: for the entirety of my life, these are the only two choices?
Love is dying, the system is killing it. The only acceptable portrayal of fulfilled love is with vampires and BDSM billionaires, not because those men are great but because there's no worry you'll meet one, enjoy your little fantasy. Now back to work, whore, you need fulfillment.
Didn't the Last Psychiatrist use to be at least sort of coherentNot in my experience. Not sure how this isn't "Single-link-op-ed" with a heaping of crazyblogging.
I think he's worked out a theory that narcissism is the dominating element of our society.Which is obviously an somewhat narcissistic thing to do
One of Sandberg's three Time-approved points is that women "leave before they leave," which means that instead of planning early to advance in their career, they plan early to leave their career. Here's a very revealing excerpt, read it closely:posted by junco at 6:10 PM on March 22 [4 favorites]
But women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way. A law associate might decide not to shoot for partner because someday she hopes to have a family. A sales rep might take a smaller territory or not apply for a management role...
"So true!" Slow down. The trick is most employable women are at best at the "sales rep" level, not the lawyer level, but because of the juxtaposition you never think: why the hell would a sales rep want to be a manager? "Oh, because it's a lot more work." Is it a lot more money? "Well, no, it's a little more money." So you want me to work a lot more now for the possibility of eventually getting a job that pays only a little more money? "Yes, stupid, it's called a promotion." It sounds like a scam. "No, it's a stepping stone to Nominal Vice President In Charge of Situations And Scenarios." Does that pay more? "What are you, a communist? 401k matches 50% of the first 6%." In other words 3%, ok, am I on a prank show? "Free GPS tracker in your phone and laptop." Thank you Yaz, my forties are going to be great.
Unlike Sandberg, most women who work in tech startups do not have seats in the front of the rocket ship. Women in tech are much more likely to be hired in support functions where they are paid a bare minimum, given tiny equity grants compared to engineers and executives, and given raises on the order of fifty cents an hour rather than thousands of dollars. According to Sandberg’s advice, these situations iron themselves out when you are on a rocket ship: women are promoted and their positions naturally improve. “What difference does going ‘back’ four years [in title and compensation] really make?” Sandberg writes of one woman asked to start on the ground level. But what if women, even in a company like Facebook, are still paying a gender penalty that nothing but conscious, structural transformation can cure?posted by purpleclover at 1:16 PM on March 26 [5 favorites]
I came up against such a penalty in my career at Facebook, which spanned from customer support to international product management to Zuckerberg’s writer: in late 2008, after working my way up from the support team to product management in the engineering sector, I was promoted to a more demanding managerial position. But there would be no raise. “You’ve already doubled your salary in a year and it wouldn’t be fair to the engineers who haven’t had that raise” (never mind that a year earlier engineers had been earning anywhere from $70,000 to $140,000, as opposed to $38,000 like I had). Far from being equitable, the concept of fairness was being deployed to explain why I needed to work for less so men wouldn’t feel resentful, as if my rapid career rise posed a threat to them, which it didn’t. At Facebook of all places, there was plenty of money and career growth to go around. If this kind of salary containment was happening to women there, I can only imagine what justifications are used in less cash-flush companies to level women’s salaries downward.
Leaning in, then, starts to look like it can benefit companies more than it benefits workers, if companies refuse to commit to equitable pay. ”More female leadership will lead to fairer treatment for all women,” Sandberg writes, though she was already working at Facebook when I experienced this particular gender penalty. In the narrative Sandberg provides, the situation I experienced wouldn’t have happened. But the fact that it did provides anecdotal clues as to why Lean In focuses on the problem it does: women’s presumed resistance to their careers rather than companies’ resistance to equal pay. Why not focus on renovating the pay structure so that women aren’t denied raises in order to make male peers more comfortable? The faster my career accelerated at Facebook, the more my financial returns diminished, until my workload was being elevated but not my salary or equity. Leaning in, then, starts to look like it can benefit companies more than it benefits workers, if companies, while asking that their women employees “lean in,” refuse to commit to equitable pay.
The crucial point is a meta one: Sandberg herself is being used in exactly the way Dissent says she is getting other women to be used. Whatever Sandberg believes she is doing, the system is using her as a battery (to get women to work harder, for less money, in exchange for the trappings of power– fame, titles, prestige.) If we believe Sandberg is earnestly trying to advance women in the workplace, then the system is using her (comparatively) cheap labor for the purpose of enhancing that very system, not changing it.posted by the man of twists and turns at 8:37 PM on March 29 [1 favorite]
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No, this is a setup, the Time Magazine demo is never going to be COO of anything, as evidenced by the fact that they read Time Magazine. Much more importantly, they are not raising daughters who are going to be COO of anything. So why is this here?
The first level breakdown is that this is what Time readers want, they want a warm glow and to be reassured that the reason they're stuck living in Central Time is sexism.
What the fuck?
posted by lunasol at 2:01 PM on March 22 [10 favorites]