HAVING IT ALL
I have been greatly disturbed by Facebook or rather the executives at Facebook: Zuckerberg an entitled brat who has no business running a company and his equally entitled Harvard alum, Sheryl Sandberg. It’s with Sandberg that I have the major issue.
She wrote a book “Lean In” that garnered her lots of acclaim for being a genius feminist who managed to beat life’s system and have it all. I hated what she did to women by telling those who bought her drivel that they too could have it all. The reality was that she spent her college years at Harvard (lucky her). I am assuming because I wasn’t there that she ingratiated herself to her fellow classmates, mostly men, by accepting and marinating herself in the patriarchal thinking that turns out future CEO’s of large corporations, that coddle future entrepreneurs and politicians and lawyers. What Harvard doesn’t provide is a moral compass.
I lived briefly in that rarefied air. My father went to Harvard and Yale. My mother spent a year at Smith and I spent high school at Rosemary Hall. I grew up in the sixties however when women were told that their job was to support one’s husband and raise a family. That’s what having it all was all about back then. Our rebellion was wanting something more, something in addition to having a family and supporting our husbands. We wanted a career. We were the first generation to “lean in” or at least try.
By my forties, after the divorce, raising the kids on my own, having no money for a long time, living in a one bedroom apartment with those two kids with no help from my family who were pissed that I got a divorce, exhausted from working two jobs, drinking too much, finding a job that became a career in a male dominated business, quitting after seven years because it was too much, moving to California, starting my own business only to fail, working for a company that almost destroyed me but after they fired me, did the right thing, and gave me all my clients and their commissions so I could survive without having to move to New Hampshire and live temporarily with my brother, moving to San Francisco where I finally started to make a success of my business as the kids got older and didn’t demand as much time, I realized that contrary to Sheryl Sandberg’s patronizing book, women for the most part can’t have it all, at least not at the same time.
Sheryl wrote her book from a position of having it all. I don’t want to belittle her achievements or her hard work in college. She was a type A personality with dreams of success that she achieved. if you measure success in dollars, she is a billionaire, she’s made it(?). She had a successful husband. He was a venture capitalist with lots of money who supported her every endeavor as she strived for ultimate power as the COO of Facebook. They had maids and nannies and I assume a cook because when one has it all one simply can’t get home from being head of a huge department at Facebook and cook for everyone. They had lovely vacations and private planes and private schools and rich friends and heralded in the media as the American dream. Tragedy struck Sheryl. Her husband died unexpectedly. I am certain it was a difficult time as when we lose someone we love, we feel unanchored, uncertain, a bit afraid and in deep sorrow.
Sheryl was resilient and came back supposedly stronger than ever or that’s what I read somewhere. She is now under attack for lying about Facebook commissioning an outside source to defame George Soros. She lied about the company’s knowledge of Russian interference and the huge number of ads placed by the Russians bolstering Trump and vilifying Clinton – ads that made Zuckerberg and Sandberg lots of money. She acted like most male executives would under attack. She acted like Zuckerberg who lied to Congress and the public about what he knew, when he knew it and how he let it continue.
Why am I picking on Sheryl? She deserves to be picked on. She gets to have the same scrutiny for lying and bad business practices as men. Importantly, I hear from men “see, women are just as bad as men.” My response is “how observant that human beings act like human beings.” Women are not exempt from bad behavior or acting in their own self-interests particularly when they break “the glass ceiling” or are trying. The hypocrisy of Sheryl and women like her lies in their witting and/or unwitting ambition that lacks integrity, honesty and a sense of morality while creating a false roadmap of success expectations.
Empowered women come to the corporate table with matriarchal thinking looking to create synergy with their patriarchal counterparts. Exchanging points of view that generate new ways to do things, they include, they listen, they respect the process. It takes immense courage for women to do that in board rooms that are ninety-eight percent men. Sometimes they succeed, and when they don’t, they create companies that reflect their more inclusive philosophy. There are more female entrepreneurs in this country than male.
To empower women you don’t lean in to an unattainable goal of having it all, you honor their struggles as single women raising kids alone, you honor the women who decide to stay home and raise their families and support their husbands, you honor their desire to better themselves by working two jobs while going to school to get a coveted degree, you honor their political and social involvements, you respect their different opinions, you honor their right to decide about the best options for their bodies, you give them low-cost access to education. If they’ve earned it, you give them a seat at the table. If they’re empowered, they help change the “good old boy” network into the everyone who has earned it network. You become the example of integrity, honesty and the very hard, life-long decisions to act morally and compassionately.