0:00

Michael Peter, what do you know

0:02

about lean in all I know is that it's

0:04

the perfect book for women who want to start

0:06

a family And also help Mark Zuckerberg

0:08

do some genocides Lean

0:23

in women work and the will

0:26

to lead we're experts on all three

0:28

People come to this podcast for a

0:30

triple expertise You know I I read

0:32

so many reviews of this book But

0:35

I think that there is one thing

0:37

that we can offer that none of

0:39

those reviews could and that's

0:41

a male perspective They said two men

0:43

couldn't have a podcast Every

0:46

day the first two guys to do it folks What

0:49

do you know about Cheryl Sandberg all

0:51

I know is always in the zinger that

0:53

she's like she's like a Facebook

0:56

lady like a sort of number two

0:58

for Mark Zuckerberg and Yeah,

1:02

we've reached I was gonna go somewhere with that sentence, but we've

1:04

reached the limits of my knowledge I don't think I'd ever heard

1:06

of her before this book came out. I think the I think that's

1:08

true of most people She's a

1:10

Harvard MBA She went to

1:12

work for a young Google and then a

1:15

young Facebook She was an

1:17

early innovator in driving ads, which is

1:19

of course how both of those companies

1:21

became Ludicrously profitable, so

1:23

she got very rich Hundreds

1:26

of millions of dollars at the time

1:28

of this publication now something just south

1:30

of two billion Oh, wow when she

1:33

wrote this book she had been Facebook's

1:35

COO for about five years So

1:37

that's sort of where she is professionally.

1:39

She was a big deal when she's

1:41

writing this I think just to contextualize

1:43

us culturally We're sort of

1:45

in the midst of or maybe even

1:47

near the end of this era of

1:49

like corporate feminism There's this sort

1:52

of like cottage industry of

1:54

books and other media targeted

1:56

towards helping women advance in

1:58

the workplace especially in

2:00

white collar jobs, right? Sandberg

2:03

rises to some mainstream acclaim when

2:05

she gives a TED Talk in

2:07

2010 titled, Why

2:09

We Have Too Few Women Leaders, which

2:12

lays out the core thesis that she

2:14

ultimately turns into this book, which she

2:17

publishes in 2013. Is

2:19

it because not enough of them can

2:21

afford constant childcare? Like a decent paying

2:23

job. So usually we talk

2:26

about books that like haven't received too

2:28

much scrutiny. But I

2:30

think the opposite is true of Lean

2:32

In. The cultural and political tide has

2:34

really turned against this book in the

2:36

past few years. When it

2:38

came out, it was broadly popular. Sandberg

2:41

was getting some good press, especially in

2:43

like the business world, doing

2:45

that talk circuit. But there

2:47

was also pretty widespread criticism, especially

2:50

from feminists, theorists, and thinkers. And

2:53

even like the favorable reviews tended to hedge

2:55

their praise a bit. And then

2:57

you get a few things happening. You

2:59

get the Me Too era, where there's

3:01

been a lot of writing and reflection

3:03

both on the book and the shortcomings

3:05

of this type of feminism generally. And

3:07

then you also get like the Cambridge

3:10

Analytica scandal. You get

3:12

the Myanmar genocide that Facebook

3:14

might've helped facilitate. All

3:16

of that sort of washes whatever residual sheen

3:18

there was off of Sheryl

3:21

Sandberg and Lean In. She lost

3:23

her title as airport royalty, parentheses

3:25

derogatory. To give you a sense

3:27

of its initial reception, when it

3:29

comes out, The Guardian called it

3:31

infantilizing. The Baffler

3:33

and Descent published like

3:35

withering reviews. But

3:37

you also had some generally favorable reviews

3:39

from the New York Times, the

3:41

New Yorker. And maybe more importantly,

3:44

from like a PR perspective, she's

3:46

partnering with a ton of big

3:48

companies and female leaders to build

3:51

this Lean In brand, which generates

3:53

a ton of press and

3:56

attention. So even though there's this sort

3:58

of backdrop of negative reviews, from

4:00

very serious thinkers, the public perception is

4:02

just like big hit book, right? I

4:05

remember the backlash to this book happening

4:07

roughly eight minutes after it came out.

4:09

I don't remember the lash. I don't

4:11

remember like people taking this up enthusiastically,

4:14

but maybe that's just like indicative of

4:16

my internet usage. You're too woke. You're

4:18

the person who reads the

4:20

Baffler and that's their first impression

4:23

of Renee. It's funny how she managed to

4:25

capture both turning of the

4:27

tide against this like white corporate feminism

4:29

and also turning of the tide against the

4:31

tech sector. The only thing that could have made

4:33

it worse is if she was somehow involved in

4:35

making season eight of Game of Thrones. Just

4:38

like the culture was not like

4:40

into this anymore. So when the

4:42

Cambridge Analytica scandal hits in 2018,

4:44

there was like this

4:46

final wave of bad press that really

4:48

seemed to just sort of be the

4:50

the nail in the coffin here. The

4:53

Washington Post publishes a piece titled The

4:55

End of Leaning In. The nation

4:57

publishes one called Lean In Has Been

4:59

Discredited for Good. Michelle Obama gave

5:01

a speech in 2018

5:04

where she said that leaning in doesn't always

5:06

work. Whoa. Yeah, when you lose Michelle Obama.

5:08

I'm trying to think of all of the

5:10

other like mainstream institutions that could have turned

5:12

against her like the Gilmore Girls did a

5:14

special episode about how much she sucks. Renee

5:16

Brown issued an emergency press release. Fuck

5:19

this lady. So given all of

5:21

that, you know, I was I was almost a

5:23

little bit wary to do this episode because a

5:25

ton of criticism has already been leveled at the book.

5:28

But then I saw a sub-stack

5:30

post by Danielle Kurtz-Lavin who's a

5:32

political reporter for NPR titled

5:34

One Cheer for Lean In where he basically makes

5:36

the argument that like every criticism

5:39

that's been leveled at Lean In is

5:41

basically right. But that she still found

5:43

value in the book as a feminist.

5:46

And I thought that was sort of

5:48

refreshing because to a lot of feminists and

5:50

people on the left, the book is almost

5:52

like a punchline at this point, right? So

5:54

I went into it with like an open

5:57

mind and after reading it

5:59

in the micro... There is a

6:01

lot of good stuff in the book.

6:03

It's relatively research-heavy. It's easy

6:05

to read. There's plenty of reasonable

6:07

advice There's also a

6:09

lot of stuff that trickled into our

6:12

public consciousness in a way

6:14

that lacks nuance But in the book

6:16

is like relatively nuanced That

6:19

said I think that after absorbing it and

6:21

thinking about it for a little bit I

6:23

do ultimately believe that this is a work

6:25

of great evil upon

6:29

reflection our podcast that dunks on books The

6:36

fraud premise of the book is very simple

6:38

She lays out a bunch of the challenges

6:40

that women face in the workplace and then

6:42

she talks about how women can address them

6:45

Right off the bat. She says that it's a book

6:47

targeting the internal obstacles that women

6:49

face hmm Which really leads to

6:51

the primary critique? Which

6:54

is that this is a set of? Individualized solutions

6:56

and structural problems. Yeah, she will set

6:58

out a bunch of very real phenomena

7:00

That appear to hold women back in

7:02

the workplace and for the most

7:05

part She actually explains those problems really well

7:07

right even though whenever the examples are personal

7:09

to her it it's not really relatable She'll

7:11

be like I was getting mentorship from Larry

7:13

Summers. Yeah One

7:16

of the ongoing motifs in the book is that

7:18

the first 90% of a

7:20

chapter will be like a relatively well-received

7:23

thorough but accessible explanation of

7:26

a problem facing women in the workplace and then

7:28

the last 10%

7:30

is just the worst prescription that you could imagine

7:34

It feels like it came from someone who didn't really

7:36

process the first 90% of the chapter right

7:38

spend a month at Costa Rica Just

7:40

unwinding Yeah, that

7:43

would probably help lots of people So

7:45

the first substantive chapter of the book

7:47

is about the ambition gap between men

7:49

and women She cites a McKinsey survey

7:51

of thousands of employees mostly at large

7:53

companies that found that 36%

7:56

of men wanted to be in the C-suite

7:58

whereas only 18 15%

8:00

of women did. There's also research showing that men

8:03

are generally more interested in management than women, and

8:05

she traces a line of research

8:07

that found similar sentiments in young

8:10

adults and children with like middle

8:12

school boys aspiring to higher powered

8:14

careers than the girls, for example.

8:17

And from there she cites a pretty

8:19

massive body of research about how this

8:21

might stem from early childhood. She says,

8:23

from the moment we are born, boys

8:25

and girls are treated differently. Parents tend

8:27

to talk to girl babies more than

8:29

boy babies. Mothers overestimate the crawling

8:31

ability of their sons and underestimate the

8:33

crawling ability of their daughters. Reflecting

8:35

the belief that girls need to be

8:37

helped more than boys, mothers often spend

8:39

more time comforting and hugging infant girls

8:41

and more time watching infant boys play

8:43

by themselves. That sounds true. That

8:45

sounds bad. Absolutely. And again, the first 90%

8:48

of every chapter is

8:50

pretty good. I'm going to send you the

8:52

next portion of this. I feel like I

8:55

need to do my Elizabeth Holmes voice for

8:57

these, my C-suite lady voice. Not all C-suite

8:59

ladies sound like Elizabeth Holmes. Sorry, Kim. The thing is

9:01

I'm allowed to be 8% more problematic

9:03

about gender than you because I'm a homosexual and

9:05

I'm closer to women. That's true, even though I

9:08

mean, I don't really agree. I think that I choose

9:11

to live with one. I've committed my

9:13

life to one. Technically. You

9:15

were going to keep them at arm's length for the rest

9:17

of your existence. As a straight man, you are actually more

9:19

qualified to speak about the problems of women than a gay

9:21

man. Fair. Fair. All right. I just sent

9:23

you a little paragraph.

9:25

Okay. She says, other cultural messages

9:28

are more blatant. Jim Berea once

9:30

sold onesies proclaiming smart like

9:32

daddy for boys and pretty like mommy

9:34

for girls. The same year

9:36

JCPenney marketed a t-shirt to teenage girls

9:38

that bragged, I'm too pretty to do homework,

9:40

so my brother has to do it for me. These

9:42

things did not happen in 1951. They happened in 2011. Yeah,

9:47

those are horrific shirts, man. What the fuck? I

9:49

mean, Jesus Christ, right? I

9:52

Feel like we've sort of. We moved

9:54

on from this quickly enough that it's

9:56

maybe no longer part of the cultural

9:58

memory of young people. That's shit

10:00

like that. As bad as it sounds,

10:02

yeah, oh yeah, sounds very familiar to

10:04

me Before Lean in came out and

10:07

changed every thanks. These areas were very

10:09

progressive, so she built on as by

10:11

talking about stereotyping by talking about the

10:13

lack of parental leave in the United

10:15

States. Soon, all of these different factors

10:17

coming together and overall it's like a

10:19

very comprehensive, fairly compelling case that the

10:22

difference in ambition between men and women

10:24

is in some large part socially constructed

10:26

frame. But then she gets to the

10:28

end of the chapter where. She translate

10:30

this into advice for women through Amazon. Do

10:32

what she says, you're the one These you

10:35

should buy for your child says. He says

10:37

fear is the root of so many of

10:39

the barriers that women face. Fear of not

10:42

being liked, Fear of making the wrong choice,

10:44

Fear of drawing negative attention, fear of over

10:46

reaching, fear of being judged, fear of failure

10:48

and the holy trinity of the year. The.

10:51

Fear of being a bad mother? Laugh?

10:53

Why? it's flash daughter without fear. Women

10:55

can pursue professional success and personal fulfillment

10:57

and freely choose one or the other

10:59

or both at Facebook. We work hard

11:01

to create a culture where. People are

11:03

encouraged to take risks. We have posters

11:05

all around the office. It reinforces this

11:07

attitude. In bright red letters

11:10

one declares fortune favors the bold,

11:12

another insists proceed and people. My.

11:15

Favorite Reads: What would you do if

11:17

he weren't afraid? We. Also

11:19

have a kitten posters in the offseason

11:21

the same thing there. It's so she's

11:23

in the like prescriptive phase of the

11:26

chapter and all of a and it

11:28

sounds like a script for like a

11:30

Super Bowl commercial for me. look at

11:32

a Facebook frequents hard to create a

11:35

culture. it's like. okay, so she lays

11:37

out the sprawling problem. and

11:39

all of these complex cultural and

11:41

political causes and you're like nodding

11:43

along and then her solution portion

11:46

is like don't be afraid right

11:48

it feels so deeply inadequate after

11:50

you read the first ninety percent

11:52

of the chapter half even just

11:55

as like a matter of individualize

11:57

advice right there is no like

11:59

research about strike strategies for overcoming

12:01

all of these social and cultural

12:04

biases or anything. There isn't really

12:06

research about being less scared. There's

12:08

nothing practical. It's

12:11

just like, get out there. What if I'm afraid

12:13

of starting a union, Cheryl? How bold should I

12:15

be? It's

12:17

so weird when companies do this. Like Fortune favors

12:19

the bold. But like I'm at a job where

12:21

I can get fired for any reason. It's America.

12:24

We have at-will employment. So like you

12:26

can be bold under very

12:28

prescribed conditions in American

12:30

workplaces. You can imagine advice

12:32

that's just like a little more

12:35

grounded in reality, a little more

12:37

practical, right? Here are

12:39

ways that you can be unafraid,

12:41

right? But in a

12:43

vacuum, it's just not really meaningful.

12:45

Like act without fear. OK.

12:49

What am I going to yell at my boss

12:51

more? Like that's what that means to me. There's

12:53

a weird sort of chicken and egg thing too,

12:55

where like one of the reasons why women are

12:57

less likely to kind of be bold in the

12:59

workplace is mostly because when women are bold, they

13:01

get called shrill. So it's not just like,

13:03

well, women need to be bold. It's more

13:05

like people need to interpret women's boldness as

13:08

the same way they interpret men's boldness as like leadership

13:10

or whatever. Oh, we will get there, Michael. We will

13:12

get there so soon. Before we

13:14

do, I want to talk about

13:16

the imposter syndrome chapter. This

13:19

is the second chapter. It's called Sit at the Table. I

13:21

imagine you have a good sense and our listeners have

13:23

a good sense of what imposter syndrome is. Because

13:26

I'm an imposter. Is that what you mean? I imagine you know

13:28

what it's like to be an imposter, Mike. But

13:30

I want to give a quick overview of like the research, where

13:32

the research comes from. In 1978, a

13:35

pair of researchers at Oberlin, Pauline

13:37

Clance and Suzanne Imes published

13:40

a paper about high achieving

13:42

women experiencing the imposter phenomenon,

13:44

a perpetual feeling of inadequacy

13:47

that seems to persist despite

13:49

consistent success. And this

13:52

parallel feeling that your fraudulence

13:54

will soon be exposed, right? The

13:56

paper is very popular, spawns a

13:58

ton of literature. In

14:00

general, women appear to be more likely

14:02

to attribute their failures to their own

14:05

shortcomings, while men will more often attribute

14:07

their failure to external factors. And of

14:09

course, there's all sorts of theory about

14:11

what is causing this. And there appear

14:14

to be like numerous inputs, including

14:16

the fact that women are often

14:18

socially and professionally punished for expressing

14:20

confidence, right? Yeah. So Sandberg's solution

14:22

has two components, one of which

14:24

I think is reasonably good. And

14:26

it's just that there should be

14:28

more public awareness of this phenomenon,

14:30

such that bosses, hiring

14:33

managers, etc. might

14:35

have some context for these differences in

14:37

behavior. The other, the

14:39

specific advice for women is just

14:41

fake it till you make it.

14:43

Okay. Just manufacture confidence, and eventually

14:45

it will generate real

14:47

confidence, which I think is okay. But

14:50

again, it does feel after,

14:53

like after going through an entire chapter

14:55

of like, here's what this imposter syndrome

14:58

is, here's what it might stem from,

15:00

there's all these cultural factors, you know,

15:02

just be confident and just like fake

15:05

confidence. It just like hits

15:07

you as like, okay, it's just very unsatisfying. I

15:09

will say after 42 years of faking it, I

15:11

don't know that it ever instills real confidence. I

15:13

don't know. I don't know if this is ever

15:15

going to go away, honestly. Although

15:17

does anybody not feel like this? So first of

15:19

all, I think the answer to that is generally

15:21

men feel this less. Okay. There's some indications that

15:23

women of color feel it less that actually they

15:26

feel like they are competent and

15:28

are not being treated as such,

15:30

right? I think we're at a point now

15:32

where one critique of this that keeps popping

15:35

up is that we're actually oversaturated with this

15:37

idea. And like, people are like over diagnosing

15:39

imposter syndrome, which of course is not an

15:41

actual syndrome. That's another problem with it. We're

15:43

at a point where like, people are using

15:46

it so much that it's no longer productive.

15:48

That like, yeah, every feeling of insecurity you

15:50

have can be described or should be described

15:52

as imposter syndrome. And also the bigger problem

15:54

is probably that the country is being run

15:57

by people who are faking imposters and who

15:59

are meeting... and shouldn't be in

16:01

their positions. That's the other side of

16:03

it. In 2021, there was a really

16:06

popular Harvard Business Review piece called Stop

16:08

Telling Women They Have Imposter Syndrome. The

16:10

basic premise is that the idea of

16:13

imposter syndrome has become so common that

16:15

it is now treated like women having

16:17

imposter syndrome is itself the problem rather

16:20

than what's really happening, which is this

16:22

is the output of a set of

16:24

misogynistic norms. The problem

16:26

isn't just that women lack confidence. It's also

16:28

that men are rewarded

16:31

for overconfidence. And in turn,

16:33

there is data showing that overconfidence is

16:35

a bad quality in leadership. So yes,

16:38

imposter syndrome is real in the sense

16:40

that it is describing a real phenomenon,

16:43

but it's part of a fabric

16:45

where companies are overvaluing traits displayed

16:47

by men and undervaluing traits displayed

16:49

by women. You can't just say,

16:51

oh, be more confident as an

16:54

effective solution to all this. Women

16:56

lacking confidence is a subset

16:59

of the actual problem. It's not

17:01

that confidence isn't being valued. It's

17:03

that competence isn't being valued. And

17:05

confidence is being mistaken for competence.

17:08

You don't solve an issue like this by just being

17:11

more bold in meetings. This is almost

17:13

like if someone was looking at hiring

17:15

patterns and realizing that men are

17:17

being hired way more than women, and they're looking at

17:19

all the data, and they're like, well, I think women

17:21

should be wearing more suits. No,

17:24

the fact that people wearing suits are being hired

17:26

at a higher rate is actually an output of

17:28

a much broader issue. When the real solution is

17:30

pantsuits. To be fair, there was a subset of

17:32

professional women who thought that was a solution for

17:34

a while there. All

17:38

right, so let's talk about something that we've sort of been

17:40

circling around. The third chapter is

17:42

called Success and Likeability. And the

17:44

first thing she talks about is

17:46

this famous Heidi Howard study. So

17:48

basically, in 2003, a couple

17:51

of professors, Frank Flynn and Cameron Anderson

17:53

ran a study where they told the

17:55

story of Heidi Roysen, an entrepreneur, to

17:57

a bunch of business students. Heidi

17:59

Roysen. The Real person. They described her success

18:01

and her personality a bit and they pulled

18:04

the students about their impressions of hiding and

18:06

and they do the same thing again except

18:08

the change. Hide. His name to

18:10

Howard Who lo and behold, the students

18:12

were way more likely to view Howard

18:14

as someone he'd want to work for

18:16

as a good colleagues. Yeah, So the

18:18

basic lesson of course is that yes

18:20

Sexism Is it says sexism is real?

18:23

Yes Yes yes. Up and fall of

18:25

pre existing gender stereotypes are built into

18:27

how women are perceived in the workplace.

18:29

Writer with the other famous is is

18:31

is an anecdote. There's also the thing

18:33

or two colleagues that basically the same

18:35

job switched email signatures so they were

18:37

doing the same thing. but. You know,

18:40

Tom became Jennifer or whatever. And by

18:42

Bahasa. And Tom immediately was just like

18:44

why is it when speaking to me That's why

18:46

he's like my name of the image is like

18:48

on a daily like normal ass email. Correspondence

18:50

way that the hostility just immediately ramped

18:52

up by like fifteen percent. When you

18:55

said email signatures, I initially thought that

18:57

you meant like a little quote below

18:59

your name thrown Emirates. I could live

19:01

laugh lot of myself and. I

19:04

should get off. Don't put your love letters and

19:06

years Peter That's why in your emails or office

19:08

consider him Sure Equality time. That

19:11

it's that's what I do. Instead of pronouns, I focus

19:13

on what matters. So

19:16

this leads into my discussion

19:18

of the negotiation gap Sandberg.

19:20

Sites A bunch of research showing

19:23

that women negotiate less often and

19:25

less aggressively than men. One study

19:27

of masseur students graduating from Carnegie

19:29

Mellon showed that men negotiated for

19:31

a higher starting salary fifty seven

19:33

percent of the time and women

19:35

seven percent of the time for

19:37

shit. Massive difference. Other research has

19:39

shown smaller but still very significant

19:41

gaps in. This is another area

19:43

where I think we need deserves

19:45

a lot of credit because the

19:47

idea of the negotiation gap was

19:49

a. Popular. topic in

19:51

academic circles month i don't think that

19:53

it was super well known before the

19:56

book on our other hand it's also

19:58

an area where i think the public

20:00

disk didn't quite process the point. I

20:03

think a lot of people sort of understand

20:05

the problem as just women need to negotiate

20:07

more, right? I've seen more than

20:09

one layperson basically interpret this as like,

20:11

yeah, women are just worse at this.

20:13

That's what's happening here, right? These phenomena

20:15

are very interesting as like a descriptive matter,

20:17

right? Like women are less likely to negotiate

20:19

than men. That's like really interesting, but that's

20:21

not the cause of the problem. And fixing

20:23

that will not fix the problem. I

20:26

think academics on this probably understand this in

20:28

a much more nuanced way than people who

20:30

just hear this little factoid and they're like,

20:32

oh, and that's why you gotta negotiate ladies.

20:34

Exactly. And I wanna be clear, Sandberg actually

20:36

sort of lays this out in much more

20:38

detail. She says, look, there

20:40

are real drawbacks for women who negotiate

20:42

because like, for example, women who take

20:45

credit for their successes are often viewed

20:47

less favorably. So the point isn't that

20:49

women are responsible for not negotiating more,

20:52

it's that this is all a minefield

20:54

for women, right? And now what's really

20:56

interesting about this is that the

20:58

latest research actually shows that the negotiation gap may

21:00

not really exist anymore, or at least is much smaller

21:02

than it used to be. There was

21:05

research published last year by Laura Cray, Jessica

21:08

Kennedy and Margaret Lee, where they

21:10

found that basically over the last

21:12

several decades, the negotiation gap has

21:14

significantly waned and has now possibly

21:17

reversed. Is that the influence of this

21:19

book or are there like other reasons for this? Like

21:21

what explains that? So the trend predates the book. They

21:24

surveyed business school graduates and they found that

21:26

more women said that they negotiated their salary

21:28

than men. And yet the gender

21:31

pay gap in that population was still 22%

21:33

in favor of men. This

21:36

also builds on some research from 2016 that

21:38

found that while there are situations where it's

21:41

productive for women to negotiate more,

21:43

negotiating more across the board actually

21:45

decreases average salary for women. So

21:48

the research from last year also

21:50

included studies that showed that the

21:53

more someone attributes gender pay disparities

21:55

to the negotiation gap, The

21:57

more likely they are to oppose pay

21:59

equity. The I I make sense.

22:02

Yeah, And moreover, People. Who

22:04

are exposed to the idea of

22:06

the negotiation gap are actually more

22:08

likely to believe certain gender stereotypes,

22:10

right? because as they the a

22:12

proxy for conservative beliefs about absolutely

22:14

absolutely. So there's like a real

22:16

concern that the proliferation of this

22:18

negotiation gap idea has been to

22:21

some degree counterproductive. rains. I just

22:23

think that the way that this

22:25

was digested by the public is

22:27

very clearly women negotiate less and

22:29

should negotiate more. Yeah, yeah. Lacking

22:31

a killer instinct right? when in.

22:33

Reality, The problem is that there

22:35

are downsides for women who try

22:37

to negotiate aggressively. Brand women respond

22:40

rationally to that by negotiating less

22:42

than men do like many situations,

22:44

right? Whereas I have always taken

22:46

the tactic of just not negotiating.

22:48

And ah, being underpaid. As

22:51

matter that Iowa I always say what's the

22:53

most you're going to pay me. That's because.

22:57

They ethical my weaknesses. I say I

22:59

work too hard and ever thought of

23:01

that before? This is did this is

23:04

that The truth that we don't tell

23:06

women amount of So you know this

23:08

reflects hapless three of the negotiation gap

23:10

issues actually really complex and interesting since

23:13

is also another area where Sandberg practical

23:15

advice really falls flat given the scope

23:17

of the problem that she has outlined.

23:19

Some tips she. Gets she says use

23:21

we instead of I when negotiate on. Now

23:24

it's word tips to provide justifications for negotiation

23:26

when you do it, because that tends to

23:28

work for women even though it doesn't actually

23:30

help met. This is like that shit from

23:33

four hour workweek ways. I don't say I

23:35

have to get up early, say I get

23:37

to get up early. I don't think words

23:39

have this magical power. What's your alarm going

23:42

off at five and you're like hell yeah.

23:44

Was that where it was? As I think

23:46

I might have an atomic habits I don't

23:48

even know anymore. One book. Michael. It doesn't

23:51

matter, I don't censor books that we had

23:53

talked about on the show. Yes, has. earned

23:56

helmets some negotiating tips for

23:59

women from Sheryl Sandberg. She

24:01

says, just being nice is not a winning

24:03

strategy. Nice sends a message that the woman

24:05

is willing to sacrifice pay to be liked

24:07

by others. This is why a woman needs

24:09

to combine niceness with insistence, a style

24:12

that Mary Sue Coleman, president of

24:14

the University of Michigan, calls relentlessly

24:16

pleasant. This method requires smiling frequently,

24:18

expressing appreciation and concern, invoking common

24:21

interests, emphasizing larger goals, and approaching

24:23

the negotiation as solving a problem

24:25

as opposed to taking a critical

24:27

stance. Most negotiations involve drawn out,

24:29

successive moves. So women need to

24:32

stay focused and smile. Dude,

24:35

I feel like this is so much advice

24:37

to women where it's like that thing in

24:39

Ocean's Eleven, where they're like, you have to

24:41

go in there and be friendly, but not

24:43

memorable. You have to tell jokes, but don't

24:45

be funny. It's like this very, very, very

24:47

narrow band of acceptable

24:50

behavior. That's the thing, is like, these

24:52

aren't, I guess, bad pieces of advice

24:54

in a vacuum. It just seems like

24:56

her advice adds up to like, pain

24:58

negotiations are a minefield for women.

25:01

So my advice is to

25:03

navigate that minefield perfectly. It's

25:05

just sort of, it's not

25:07

super productive because there are

25:09

just too many obstacles here

25:12

to dodge around. Not to mention,

25:14

it sort of feels a little bit gross

25:16

to have the advice from someone very powerful, basically

25:19

be to like, deal with sexist

25:21

tropes, like smile. Well, don't forget to

25:23

smile. This is always, I think, just

25:25

like an inherent limitation of these books, because

25:28

oftentimes what they're doing, they're giving advice about

25:30

how to thrive in an unjust society, right?

25:32

In a society where like homophobia is rampant,

25:34

here's how to be a gay person in

25:36

the workplace and like not have like slurs

25:38

thrown at you. That's super fucked up, but

25:40

also people do need advice like this, right?

25:43

Like it feels fucked up to say

25:45

like, women should smile during pain negotiations,

25:47

but we do live in an extremely

25:49

sexist society where like, some of this

25:51

fake fucking femininity that you have to

25:53

perform at work will actually help you

25:55

rise up the ladder. But then the obvious

25:57

critique to advice like this is like, fuck you.

26:00

You're not giving as he advised to play

26:02

a fucking larger problem you can use you

26:04

can't. Thread. The needle in

26:06

these books. Rights, I mean, and

26:08

there's like a rich tradition in

26:11

marginalized communities of like sharing this

26:13

type of advice, right? Yes, a

26:15

lot of like black writers and

26:17

thinkers have talked about teaching their

26:20

kids how to behave around police.

26:22

Get the i endorsing the fact

26:24

that they are disproportionately affected by

26:26

police violence. They're just trying to

26:28

guide their child's through. It's getting

26:31

sort of see Sandberg advice in

26:33

that vein yet. But what sort

26:35

of notably odd about Sandberg. Advice

26:37

is that. Not. Only is

26:40

the advice itself just not very

26:42

practical, but Sandberg is a very

26:44

powerful person who is in a

26:46

position to do more than just

26:48

give women helpful tips right? Because in

26:50

in the police brutality. Metaphor sees the

26:52

top sufficient of the one with

26:54

power in the situation seat on

26:56

the other side of the negotiating

26:58

table. There's a glaring omission. In.

27:00

The negotiation get prescription.

27:03

Which. Is that if the problem we're trying

27:05

to overcome. His the stereotyping

27:07

and bias that appear in individualized

27:10

negotiations. One pretty potent solution would

27:12

be to rely on collective negotiations.

27:14

Right, right? right? The gender pay

27:16

gap there among unionized workers still

27:19

exists, but is considerably smaller, and

27:21

women in unions are in higher

27:23

wages and better benefits almost across

27:25

the board. There is not a

27:27

single mention of unions in his

27:30

entire book when surprise any war

27:32

sad, but just sort of speaks

27:34

to. The. Walls that

27:36

you run up against here because

27:38

Sheryl Sandberg. Is. Worth hundreds

27:40

of millions of dollars. That's the she smiles

27:43

So much in the inner stop smiling my

27:45

way to the top of the Sheryl Sandberg

27:47

story says, this discussion said was pretty nicely

27:50

into what might be the second most prominent

27:52

criticism of Lane, In which is that. Sheryl.

27:54

Sandberg is an exceedingly wealthy human being.

27:57

Yeah, and the book reflects that. And

27:59

there. Therefore, it's not super

28:01

useful for the median woman. Now,

28:04

I think this critique is more or

28:06

less right. The entire book is geared

28:08

toward white collar professional women who make

28:10

a lot of money. Nearly

28:12

every anecdote is about upper class

28:14

professionals. The research is disproportionately about

28:16

upper class professionals, both in the

28:18

book and generally. There's a

28:20

ton of focus on elite jobs at big prestigious

28:23

companies. McKinsey does an annual report

28:25

on the state of women in the workplace,

28:28

but the focus is specifically the corporate

28:30

workplace. And the data is based on a

28:32

survey of employees and companies where in

28:34

2023, the most common industry is

28:36

asset management and investment. That's

28:38

not a survey on women in the workplace. That's

28:41

a survey on corporations. One

28:44

example of how this manifests in the

28:46

book is when Sandberg is talking about

28:48

childcare and the burdens that are placed

28:50

on working women by simultaneously

28:53

needing to work and having the

28:55

social obligation to care for the kids. Which is

28:57

a real thing because of course there's still all

28:59

these bullshit gendered expectations about women having to stay

29:01

home and fucking do everything too. It's like

29:04

there's two toxic set of

29:06

gendered expectations going on at the same

29:08

time. So she speaks about this problem

29:10

relatively eloquently, but I'm going to send

29:12

you a bit of her advice. She

29:14

says, one miscalculation that some women make

29:16

is to drop out early in their

29:18

careers because their salary barely covers the

29:20

cost of childcare. Childcare is

29:22

a huge expense, and it's frustrating to work

29:24

hard just to break even. But professional

29:26

women need to measure the cost of

29:28

childcare against their future salary rather than

29:30

their current salary. Anna Fiele describes becoming

29:32

a mom at 32 as the time

29:34

when the rubber hits the road. A

29:37

rising star in marketing, Anna was concerned

29:39

that her after-tax salary barely covered her

29:41

childcare expenses. With husbands often making more

29:43

than wives, it just seems like hire

29:45

ROI to invest in his career she

29:47

told me. But she thought about all the time

29:49

and money she had already invested in her career

29:51

and didn't see how walking away made economic sense

29:53

either. So she made what she called a leap

29:55

of blind faith and stayed in the workforce. Years

29:58

later, her income is many times greater than the average. than

30:00

what she almost withdrew. Must be nice.

30:03

Must be nice. So to be

30:05

clear, the advice is basically when

30:07

you pull out of the workforce,

30:10

you're hurting your future earnings. So

30:13

even though you're just breaking even with child care

30:15

now, it'll pay off

30:17

in the future. And that's a

30:19

really solid piece of advice for

30:21

wealthy white-collar professional women who either

30:23

have significant savings or a spouse

30:25

that makes good money. But

30:28

this is a complete non-starter

30:30

for almost everyone in the

30:32

country. Normal human beings cannot

30:34

just absorb the cost of

30:36

nearly your entire salary as

30:39

an investment that'll pay off in seven

30:41

years or something. Right, because the ultimate

30:44

resolution to this story is this woman

30:46

kept her job and paid a good chunk of

30:48

her salary to someone to look after her kids

30:50

or daycare or whatever. But that's not

30:53

an option that a lot of people have. A lot of

30:55

people just simply can't afford it. This feels so out of

30:57

touch that I was just waiting for her to be like,

30:59

yeah, well, obviously, no one can

31:01

do this. But you need food and shelter. I

31:03

mean, does she even make, I guess, perfunctory mention

31:05

of like, well, not everybody can afford to do

31:07

this? I don't remember if she does it in

31:10

this part of the book, but there are several

31:12

parts of the book where she sort of gives

31:14

these little asides. Not everyone can do this. This

31:16

won't work for everybody. This is easier for certain

31:18

people. She has this sort of flickering

31:21

awareness that this is unusual

31:24

and that most people can't live like this. But

31:26

she is never able to actually provide advice

31:29

to people who can't do this stuff.

31:31

One of the best portions of the

31:33

book is when she is talking about

31:35

what women should demand of their partners. Essentially

31:37

saying that men need to be responsible

31:39

in the home if women are going

31:41

to succeed in the workplace. There needs

31:43

to be division of labor at home. This

31:46

makes perfect sense. You read this as a

31:48

personal attack. What about the shelves? What about

31:50

the nation's shelves? I

31:52

think this stands out because it's one of

31:54

the few times that she seems to be

31:56

asking something of men in the book. Okay.

31:59

But something interesting. that Bell Hooks

32:01

pointed out in her critique. Bell Hooks,

32:03

of course, the late

32:05

great feminist theorist, is

32:07

that Sandberg admits offhand that

32:09

her husband handles their finances.

32:12

Now I don't entirely know what it means to handle

32:15

the finances when you're worth hundreds of

32:17

millions of dollars. Yeah, he has two calls a

32:19

year with their finance guy. Right, just like shooting

32:21

emails to the accountant or whatever. But

32:24

what Hooks says is that this is actually

32:26

a dangerous message to send to people who

32:28

aren't rich because what Hooks and other feminist

32:30

theorists and activists have been saying for a long time

32:33

is that independence for women requires

32:35

control of money. There's been a

32:37

ton written about this, but in

32:39

short, part of what perpetuates the

32:41

subjugation of women is that within

32:43

family units, men control the money,

32:46

which helps them dictate how families operate,

32:49

can pressure women to remain in bad

32:51

and abusive relationships, et cetera, et cetera.

32:54

So this is sort of like a niche critique, but

32:56

I found it very telling because not

32:59

only is Sandberg just a little too

33:01

rich to give practical advice about this,

33:03

but it feels like she hasn't engaged

33:05

with the literature quite to the degree

33:07

that you would want from someone who

33:09

is giving, who's on

33:12

a stage talking to all women in her

33:14

own mind. The thing, the only response to

33:16

rich people giving financial advice like this is

33:18

to just be like, how much does a

33:20

banana cost? When rich people

33:22

talk about financial management, dealing with

33:24

our personal finances, it's a totally

33:27

different experience than poor

33:29

people dealing with their finances. It's

33:31

like one of them is like, should we do like

33:33

an index fund or like a target date mutual fund?

33:35

It's though it's like dealing with structuring

33:37

of excess. There's a disconnect with

33:40

the ultra rich that like

33:42

no amount of thoughtfulness is ever

33:44

going to bridge. The way that

33:46

Sheryl Sandberg exists day to day

33:49

is so different from a working

33:51

class woman. She can't

33:53

process what their lives are like

33:55

in any meaningful way. As opposed

33:57

to male podcasters. I

34:01

I did the work of talking to several

34:04

women. Okay, I talked I talked to like

34:06

seven women about this book Okay, that's more

34:08

than you've talked to in years I'm

34:11

just saying this for an iron why I'm being mean I'm

34:16

giving you shit about this as if as if

34:18

as if gay men are better than straight

34:20

men on this But gay men are misogynistic

34:22

as fuck like it's so they think that

34:24

it's like funny to be misogynistic and they're so

34:26

fucking gross So like I am NOT

34:29

speaking from a group with like a

34:31

great track record on this No, like

34:33

I like I said earlier you are

34:35

inherently more problematic in that you chose

34:37

to abandon the

34:41

Traditional male-female dynamic and

34:43

just have gay sex for the rest of your

34:45

life I like that we're fighting over which one

34:47

of us is like slightly less problematic for talking

34:49

about this Like are we level 9 or level

34:51

10 bad right doing this episode? That's the key

34:54

to winning the trust of our audience It's

34:57

fighting over who's less qualified Demographically

35:00

so Sandberg does seem to be somewhat

35:02

aware that this is all really for

35:04

rich women But she never fully admits

35:07

it and she uses a ton of

35:09

rhetoric that makes it seem like her

35:11

concern is all women But then when

35:13

she like really zones in it's about

35:15

white-collar professionals, right? Right her introductory chapter

35:17

has a bunch of stats about the

35:19

wage gap and she says quote My

35:21

intention is to offer advice that will

35:23

resonate with women in a broad range

35:25

of circumstances But in the

35:28

same paragraph she says I believe that

35:30

female leaders are key to the solution

35:32

If you recall that was also like

35:34

the focus of her TED talk. Why

35:37

aren't there more female leaders? It's all

35:39

leadership oriented more than one reviewer has

35:41

called this trickle-down feminism Which

35:43

I wrote down I wrote down I thought of that I was

35:45

like Oh trickle-down feminism and I thought I was the most clever

35:48

person in the world I'm the I'm

35:50

the thousandth person to describe

35:52

it that way We just did the episode

35:54

on the Claudine gay plagiarism scandal. It

35:56

sounds like you plagiarized someone else Peter

36:00

post. One of the core problems with

36:02

this book is that it's

36:04

not entirely clear that this actually works,

36:06

that the presence of women in leadership

36:09

results in better results for women

36:11

like across an organization. The

36:13

research on this is really interesting. For

36:15

example, there's recent research showing that

36:17

a female CEO is actually less

36:20

likely to promote women into senior

36:22

management. Yeah. There's a study

36:24

from a few years back showing that there's an

36:26

implicit quota for women in senior management, meaning that,

36:28

and I'm quoting them, the presence of

36:30

a woman on a top management

36:32

team reduces the likelihood that another woman

36:34

occupies a position on that team. I've

36:37

heard enough. We need more male CEOs in this country. You

36:41

can also see this implied a bit by

36:43

the McKinsey Women in the Workplace data, because

36:45

since 2015, there has been a 65% increase

36:47

in the number of women in the C-suite

36:49

at the surveyed

36:54

companies, but 7% to

36:57

8% increases in the number of

36:59

women in entry-level and managerial positions. This

37:01

is something we've talked about for various

37:03

other topics too, that representation is obviously

37:05

a necessary condition, but it's not a sufficient

37:08

condition. I think it's also important that maybe

37:10

what's happening is that companies know that it

37:12

looks good to have a higher percentage of

37:14

women in the C-suite, so they pluck some

37:17

out of senior leadership, and then they're like,

37:19

all right, job's done. Some

37:21

interesting qualifiers here. There's a good

37:23

amount of evidence that a lot

37:26

of these patterns change

37:28

based on circumstance. Women

37:30

aren't just like innately opposed to hiring

37:32

other women, right? One study

37:34

found that women in prestigious positions are

37:36

much less likely to hire other

37:38

women, but women in less prestigious

37:41

positions are actually more likely to

37:43

hire women than men. That

37:46

same study found that on teams

37:48

that are majority female, the bias

37:50

functionally drops away, and they

37:52

just hire other women at about a 50% rate,

37:55

which indicates that what's happening is

37:57

possibly that women in leadership positions

37:59

often avoid. avoid hiring other women

38:01

because they perceive an implied quota

38:03

for women in leadership, right? And

38:06

they don't want to hire their own direct competition. But once

38:08

there are more women on the team, they

38:10

get more comfortable, that perception goes away, and

38:13

their bias falls off completely and they just

38:15

start hiring women at a normal rate. So

38:18

Sandberg is sort of like half right here

38:20

maybe. The presence of women in leadership, once

38:22

it reaches a critical mass, might get more

38:24

women in leadership. There's not a

38:26

ton of evidence that it will just naturally

38:28

trickle down the ladder to more junior roles

38:30

either. There's also companies where the few

38:32

women who are in management positions, there's

38:34

so much friction and so much bullshit

38:36

that you have to deal with as

38:38

like one of the few women in

38:40

the C-suite that those women get driven

38:43

out. One

38:45

of my best friends in Seattle is like a

38:47

middle manager at a large tech company and she

38:49

is always the only woman in the room. And

38:52

having like having to be the one who

38:54

raises her hand and says like, I don't

38:56

think this is addressing like female users every

38:59

fucking meeting. And then she has all these like

39:01

phone calls of people being like, we need a woman's perspective,

39:03

can you be in this meeting? And she's like, I have to

39:05

do my actual job too. So like,

39:07

yeah, reaching that saturation point can take

39:09

an extremely long time and kind of goes and

39:12

fits and starts and can be really hard on

39:14

the women who have to actually do it. There's

39:17

also an argument that this is just

39:19

too far downstream of the real problem,

39:21

which is that women are getting pushed

39:23

out in the middle because they're being

39:25

forced to choose between their families and

39:28

a job, right? Because we are

39:30

not facilitating a world where women

39:32

can have a child

39:34

and maintain their position at work.

39:37

That pushes women in their like 20s and

39:39

30s especially down the ladder a bit.

39:42

And then 20 years later, there aren't

39:44

going to be as many women in

39:46

senior management. The men

39:48

are sort of just at this advantage that

39:51

is the result of all these cultural and

39:53

political norms. And well,

39:55

how do you address that? A,

39:57

by shifting those cultural norms, which I think

39:59

Sandburg probably recognizes and doesn't

40:01

recognize, B, extensive

40:04

family leave policies perhaps, right?

40:07

Yeah. And Sandberg does, I mean,

40:09

she talks about family leave and the importance of

40:11

it. The policies at Facebook were sort of industry

40:13

leading for a bit. So I

40:15

don't want to say that she deserves no credit

40:17

there, but I do think that the

40:20

actual solution from a policy perspective

40:22

is much more comprehensive than someone

40:24

like Sandberg is willing to

40:26

accept. There's a related

40:28

criticism of the book related

40:30

to Sandberg's elitism that

40:33

was made really forcefully by

40:35

Susan Faludi, famous author

40:38

wrote Backlash. She

40:41

wrote this review for The Baffler right after the book came

40:43

out. And the idea is

40:45

that this book is in effect an

40:47

act of corporate PR and

40:49

one that mirrors a long history

40:52

of efforts to co-opt the aesthetics

40:54

and rhetoric of feminism and liberation

40:56

in the service of consumerism and

40:58

capitalism. Yeah, here at Facebook, here's

41:01

our posters. Absolutely. That one line

41:03

like took me out of a

41:05

stupor when I was reading it. All right,

41:08

I'm going to send you a quote. She

41:10

is talking here about how in the 1920s

41:13

when there were these nascent women's

41:15

movements, they were undermined

41:17

by consumerism. The rising new forces

41:19

of consumer manipulation, mass media,

41:22

mass entertainment, national advertising, the

41:24

fashion and beauty industries, popular psychology,

41:26

all seized on women's yearning for

41:28

independence and equality and redirected them

41:30

to the marketplace. Over and

41:33

over, mass merchandisers promised women an

41:35

air-sats version of emancipation, the fulfillment

41:37

of individual and aspirational desire. Wime

41:39

out a collective protest against the

41:41

exploitations of the workplace when it was so

41:44

much more gratifying, not to mention easier, to advance

41:46

yourself and only yourself by shopping

41:48

for liberating products that express your

41:50

individuality and signaled your seemingly elevated

41:53

class status. So she's making the

41:55

case that Lean In fits into

41:57

this mold, right? Substituting solid air.

42:00

clarity with this individualized

42:02

pursuit of corporate success.

42:04

I went into this being aware that there was

42:07

like this wave of criticism for Lean In. I

42:09

wanted to sort of go into it with an open

42:11

mind and I read it and I was sort of

42:13

giving it a ton of credit in my brain until

42:16

this review like shook

42:19

me out of it. It was so good.

42:21

This is like, I mean, it's a review

42:23

that everyone who wants to understand this book

42:25

should read. She reaches out to Facebook to

42:27

ask for data on their

42:30

demographics, which Facebook declines to

42:32

provide. And what she focuses on

42:35

is that Lean In is not just

42:37

a book, it is also a nonprofit,

42:40

leanin.org, that operates as an initiative of

42:42

Sandberg's Foundation. And it has

42:44

like community groups that you can

42:47

join as well as literally hundreds

42:49

of corporate and celebrity sponsors from

42:51

Chevron to Amazon to Oprah, obviously

42:54

Facebook, right? To be a partner

42:57

requires no material commitment of any

42:59

kind. All of these

43:01

power players very quickly signed

43:03

onto the brand, which really makes it

43:06

seem like the whole apparatus is essentially

43:08

serving a PR function, right? Because you're

43:10

not trying to hold companies accountable if

43:12

you're just letting them latch on to

43:14

your little feminist brand and declare themselves

43:16

allies, right? We see this too, but

43:18

like John Roberts is a great little

43:20

lead coach or something. And it's

43:23

like, what matters in your life is what you do

43:25

with power. And the question is not whether

43:27

Sheryl Sandberg is good at balancing her own

43:29

career with her own personal life. It's like,

43:31

what has she done with the immense

43:34

power that she has? And like, has

43:36

Facebook been a force for

43:38

gender equality on the world writ large?

43:40

The sort of like sum total of

43:43

Facebook's contribution to material feminism

43:46

is a slightly more generous

43:48

leave policy than most

43:50

of their tech counterparts. That's it.

43:53

When Chevron can very

43:55

safely align themselves with Lean In,

43:57

what's happening is that Lean In,

43:59

it's asking very little of Chevron

44:01

because it's placing the burden on

44:04

women themselves, right? You

44:06

know, recall the annual McKinsey Women in

44:08

the Workplace report. That report

44:10

is now done in partnership with

44:12

leanin.org. Oh, nice. I didn't

44:14

know it was still around. Oh, yeah, it's around.

44:16

Okay. To sort of give some color to

44:18

this. In 2019, a

44:21

Facebook employee, a mother who had just

44:23

had her third child, asked Facebook if

44:25

she could work part-time from home while

44:27

her baby was still young. They

44:29

said no. She said, okay,

44:31

what about unpaid leave? They

44:34

said no again. So she

44:36

resigned and she left a very

44:38

public post on the internal Facebook

44:40

page voicing her displeasure, which

44:43

got so much attention that Sheryl Sandberg

44:45

herself responded to say that this is

44:47

all stuff they want to do but

44:49

can't do right now. This is a

44:51

company that, of course, the very next

44:53

year when COVID hit, successfully went fully

44:56

remote, just like everyone else. It

44:58

also has invested $50 billion

45:00

in the metaverse since this all

45:03

went down. I was wondering if you were going

45:05

to bring that up. You're like, this

45:07

motherfucker doesn't have legs. Right. The

45:10

idea that they couldn't have done part-time

45:12

remote work for a limited time for

45:14

new mothers. Come the fuck on. Yeah.

45:17

Right. Give me a fucking break. Yeah.

45:20

It's just not true. It's a choice that

45:22

they're making. They're choosing to light billions of

45:24

dollars on fire on the dumbest idea in

45:27

human history instead of doing this. Right? This

45:29

is like the bare minimum if you care

45:31

about this issue. But the

45:33

good news, ladies, you can get

45:35

unpaid leave in the metaverse. There

45:38

will be a virtual job with all

45:40

the benefits that you dream of. I

45:45

will say the later chapters of this book

45:47

where Sandberg opens up, usually the later chapters

45:49

of our books are the worst because it's

45:51

just the shit that gets shuffled to

45:54

the later chapters. In

45:56

Sandberg's case, I would say they're like

45:59

the least researched. heavy, they haven't resonated

46:01

as much in the public consciousness, but

46:03

they contain a lot of like the

46:05

sort of personal anecdotes that make her

46:07

seem a little more likable, stories of

46:09

her navigating through the business world in

46:11

different ways. Again, there's a little too

46:13

much Larry Summers for my taste, but

46:15

when she's speaking a little more openly

46:17

about just like, you know, how it

46:19

felt to be a woman in the

46:21

workplace, this is something I heard from

46:23

a couple of women I talked to,

46:25

that there are more points of friction for

46:28

women than men in the workplace. And that steadily

46:30

drags on them over the course of their lives.

46:32

And it's sort of proof to all

46:35

women that like, this is a

46:37

rot that stretches all the way up

46:39

into the upper classes, right? Right, right.

46:41

If a woman who is worth hundreds

46:43

of millions of dollars is

46:45

still like, damn, this is the shit is

46:47

sexist, then it really does never end. There's

46:50

no escape. Right. I

46:52

do think that there's like a version of these

46:54

types of books that can be written responsibly. It's

46:57

just like, okay, here's decent advice for like 6%

46:59

of American women. On

47:01

one hand, I think that there is probably

47:03

enough in this book that it's not a

47:06

terrible introduction to certain feminist ideas

47:08

for like a young woman in

47:10

the white collar world. You get

47:13

introduced to wage gap stuff, to

47:15

concerns about childcare and all these

47:17

cultural norms that swirl around it.

47:21

I also think there's like a real

47:23

danger that a generation of women might

47:26

be viewing feminist thought through the

47:28

lens of a billionaire who like,

47:30

when the chips are down, will

47:32

side with her corporation over struggling

47:34

women, right? It's not just that

47:36

this is an introduction necessarily to

47:39

feminist thought for a lot of people. It

47:41

might be the sum total of the feminist thought that they are

47:43

being exposed to. Yeah.

47:46

There's also such a missed opportunity with these like

47:48

groups, these support groups that get together. The

47:50

idea of women meeting in their homes, I mean like

47:52

what challenges are we all facing as women this week?

47:55

It's actually a fucking great idea. That's awesome.

47:57

But it's like, oh, sponsored, like Chevron

47:59

presents. Wednesday meetings at

48:01

Marlene's house, it's like super

48:03

fucked up. And the fact that it seems like

48:06

they would be pruning those to a

48:08

level where like you wouldn't have

48:10

a broad range of people going to those

48:12

things and you wouldn't have like a

48:14

real conversation about like what can we

48:16

actually do. Right. I

48:18

want to also add before we move on,

48:20

there is a common critique of this book

48:23

that I just think is bad, which is

48:25

that all of this has been said before

48:27

and said better by other feminist thinkers,

48:30

etc, etc. That's definitely true.

48:33

I don't think that Sandberg views herself

48:35

as someone who is introducing these ideas

48:37

for the first time. He's just aggregating

48:40

and popularizing, right, which is a real

48:42

role that we need. Despite the premise

48:44

of this show, we both actually feel

48:46

very strongly that like pop nonfiction as a project

48:49

is totally fine. We need this stuff. So the

48:51

fact that somebody is mainstreaming a bunch of stuff

48:53

that has been around is like actually great. Yeah,

48:55

absolutely. I mean, and there are

48:57

discrete ideas in this book that I

48:59

think have resonated with the broader culture

49:01

for good reason. The idea that women

49:04

are more frequently interrupted in meetings, right,

49:06

was something that several people I spoke

49:08

to said they hadn't heard

49:10

articulated before lean in, but immediately recognized

49:12

when they heard it. Yeah, that sort

49:15

of stuff matters. It's important, even

49:17

if it's something that's going to impact white collar

49:19

women more, it's something that it's a dynamic that

49:21

a huge percentage of women have

49:24

been exposed to and experienced. And yeah,

49:26

I just, I think it's good that there

49:29

is like pop nonfiction talking about

49:31

that. Yeah, yeah. And also, this

49:34

sounds like me being super problematic, but it's like, you

49:36

also need to package these ideas in ways that

49:38

men can absorb them to, right, and being like,

49:41

I'm a corporate lady telling corporate dudes that

49:43

they need to stop being shitty is like

49:45

actually pretty important and good, right? Although it doesn't sound

49:47

like she's doing that much of that in the book, but

49:49

in principle, frankly, she's not there. There is something there is

49:51

sort of a, what I was hoping she would

49:53

talk about a bit more is like, there's

49:55

cool research showing that like hedge

49:58

funds run by women, for example. are

50:00

more successful than hedge funds run

50:02

by men. One way to think

50:05

about that is that maybe women are just better at managing

50:07

money. The smarter way to think

50:09

about it is that women who are in

50:11

those positions have done more to earn them

50:13

than men and tend to just be performing

50:16

better for that reason. I think that sort

50:18

of stuff is important because it shows

50:21

that this sort of discrimination

50:23

is obviously real and also

50:25

has something to say to

50:27

like elites, right? Like, hey, the fact that

50:29

you are allowing a culture of misogyny in

50:32

your organization, that is harming your bottom line.

50:34

I like that we're doing the opposite of

50:36

making up a guy to be mad at.

50:38

We're making up a lady who wrote a

50:40

good book. In

50:43

principle, a book like this could have

50:45

been fine. One of our listeners

50:47

who actually wrote that book is like crying right now. Talk

50:52

about a good book for once, Mike and Peter.

50:54

This is the most common feedback we get on

50:56

our show about bad books. I think

50:58

we should do a good book. To

51:00

wrap this episode up, I think we should

51:02

just have a big picture conversation about the

51:04

corporate feminist moment. It does feel like Lean

51:06

In was sort of the peak of this

51:08

movement. Now we've seen a

51:11

pretty widespread backlash against it

51:13

from the left, but also, of course, from

51:16

the right. I feel like it gets so

51:18

much flack, the idea of

51:20

white corporate feminism, because the

51:22

way that a lot of people see it

51:25

is that rich white women are

51:28

like in second place. Above them

51:30

is wealthy white men, below them,

51:32

everyone else. To

51:34

build a political movement around

51:37

their advancement is like

51:39

very literally the shallowest form of

51:41

liberation that you can imagine. The

51:44

thing is that you can't fully

51:47

disentangle corporate feminism from feminism

51:49

itself. Now, despite

51:52

cultivating straight guy vibes

51:54

on this show, I do have like

51:57

a weirdly large number of...

51:59

friends and acquaintances who are

52:02

like feminist scholars or academics of some type.

52:04

I could tell from the whiff of soy

52:06

when we met in person. Like

52:08

a fucking tofu aisle at the grocery store. And

52:11

yeah, I was able, like, you know, I sort

52:13

of picked a lot of their brains very informally

52:15

on this stuff. You said, how do I not

52:17

get yelled at doing an episode as a man

52:19

about lean in? This is a conversation I've

52:22

had with my friends too. It's fun. I

52:24

gave them a list of the jokes

52:26

I plan to make and they returned them

52:28

to me all crossed out. One

52:33

of the common threads I got was like, all

52:35

of them were hyper skeptical of

52:38

lean in and like lean

52:40

in style corporate feminism. But

52:43

they all had like some concern

52:45

that sort of circled around this

52:47

idea that like, you know, we live

52:49

in a world where this type of feminism

52:52

is heavily criticized. But

52:54

if it is not replaced

52:56

with an affirmative feminism, something

52:59

that does work for

53:01

a broad swath of women, then

53:03

what we're left with is just

53:05

the critique. And if all

53:07

that remains in our cultural memory is

53:10

just this critique of corporate feminism,

53:12

then it's hard to imagine a

53:15

positive outcome. It feels like maybe

53:18

this just manifests in

53:20

a critique of feminism itself, a world

53:22

where it like feminism is perceived to

53:24

have produced a failed movement of some

53:27

kind. Do you have a narrative, Peter,

53:29

like what explains the rise and fall

53:31

of corporate feminism? I've now read a lot

53:33

about it. And the only thing that I

53:35

can say with confidence is that there's like

53:38

this broader narrative where women enter

53:40

the workforce. And

53:42

we sort of reach a point where there are a

53:44

few senior women, but

53:46

clearly not enough. And

53:49

as a society, we're telling ourselves

53:51

that a lot of the problems

53:54

with women's rights are in the rearview

53:56

mirror. And yet we are all staring

53:58

at a leader's face. class

54:01

that is clearly dominated by men. And

54:03

invested in the interests of men, even

54:05

though it is more female than it

54:07

used to be. Right. I

54:09

think that that's what sort of spurs this moment.

54:12

We have like, there's a narrative that society is

54:14

telling itself about how far we've come. And

54:16

then there's the fact that you can like look out at the Senate.

54:18

Right. And be like, okay, what the fuck

54:20

are we even talking about here? Yeah. I

54:23

mean, one of the things I always think about is that at the

54:25

moment of, you know, the Google memo, he wrote

54:27

that whole thing of like, oh, women, their brains, kids, kids, kids,

54:29

kids, can't do math or whatever at a time when Google was

54:31

80% men. Right. Right.

54:35

It's like the sense of threat among men

54:37

at like these, these extremely

54:40

male dominated workplaces becoming like

54:42

slightly less male dominated. Yeah.

54:45

It's like a very, very powerful force. Yeah.

54:47

To sort of like process the scope of like

54:50

male backlash against feminist

54:53

progress. It's evidence

54:55

that opposition to feminism has risen

54:57

about among young liberal men in

54:59

the last like three years. Oh,

55:02

wow. In 2020, there was a

55:04

Pew study that said 60% of

55:06

men across parties agreed

55:09

that feminism was empowering and 34% said

55:11

it was outdated. In

55:15

2022, Southern Poverty Law

55:17

Center did a poll where

55:19

they found that 62% of young Republican men

55:23

said feminism is a net negative for

55:25

society. 46%

55:28

of young Democratic men also

55:30

said it was a negative. So

55:33

we're reaching the point where young

55:35

Democratic men are almost

55:37

as a general matter opposed

55:40

to feminism. Right. What

55:42

do you make of that? Like, what do you think explains it?

55:44

Their explanation was that this is reaction to me too. Yeah. This

55:47

is sort of like over correction for what

55:49

people perceive of as the excesses of me

55:51

too. You mean like two famous rapists went

55:54

to jail? In

55:56

this moment where the fucking backlash to progress is

55:58

always so much bigger than the fucking alleged progress

56:00

itself. You're thinking about it pretty narrowly, but this is

56:02

a time when we need the Cosby show more than

56:04

ever. You

56:10

know, there's also questions about like social

56:12

media echo chambers where other

56:14

than ours, every podcast that involves two

56:16

men, men, I know,

56:19

it's basically just two guys complaining

56:21

about women. Maybe that's, maybe that's a

56:23

problem. There's a sense of threat among

56:25

dudes to like trans people and like

56:28

feminism and stuff. It's like, genuinely the

56:30

thing that I cannot like get my

56:32

head around and feels so dangerous and

56:34

scary. Some men hate women so much

56:36

that they choose to have sex with

56:38

men. You're

56:42

going to bring this back to how I'm problematic. I'm

56:44

never letting, never letting up.