Samuel van der Swaagh 03/19/13
Sheryl Sandberg’s Barnard Commencement of 2011 was idealistic in tone, yet I cannot help appreciate the honesty and reasonableness of her message. The most compelling part of her speech that remains ingrained on my mind is her call for women to “lean in.” It was evident that Sheryl had no desire to ask current work institution to change but for women to take assertive action. Perhaps I appreciate Sheryl’s non-aggressive feminist approach to equality because I am biased (i.e. I am a man). Nonetheless, I believe that Sheryl touches on a point that I think both genders can agree on: structural institutions are downstream from cultural behavior. That is, the reason that men usually “run the show” is not necessarily from male oppression (at least not in America), but from female tendencies to “lean back” as Sheryl states. I recall three persuasive points that Sheryl outlines in her commencement speech.
First, Sheryl notes that women must overcome internal forces, whether or not a consequence of social constructs, in order to obtain equality within the workspace. As Sheryl eloquently stated in her speech, “In order to close the work gap, women need to close the ambition gap.“ Sheryl encourages women to dream big instead of waiting for the male dominant world to change. Throughout the commencement, Sheryl communicated that people gravitate towards those who possess grand visions. I somewhat agree with Sheryl in that women need to be more ambitious in order to survive in a predominantly male governed society.
Perhaps my struggle to completely agree with Sheryl on this point arises out of my biased masculine perceptions. Despite this possibility (although any person discrediting my viewpoint merely on the basis of my gender is committing an Adhominem), I observe in Academia that powerful women gain the spotlight more often than powerful men. That is, in our highly PC environment, I think that ambitious women have an advantage over ambitious men. I am not discrediting the statistics stating that—despite the equal graduation rate of women students since 1982—women still occupy less than 20% of government and workplace leadership. Rather, I am stating that if a strong woman was competing against four strong men, I have observed that the odds usually favor the woman. Again, perhaps my perspective of the situation is distorted by male biases. Although I partly disagree with Sheryl’s ideas of ambition, I do concur with Sheryl’s ideas about self-determination.
Second, women in the past have not been equally encouraged as much as men to view themselves as “awesome,” as Sheryl would say. Instead, according to Sheryl, women are usually socialized to regard themselves as “lucky” or “fortunate,” while men are usually socialized to view themselves as “smart” or “self-determining.” That is, for any achievement women have a greater tendency than men to credit outside factors or people who contributed to their successes. Consequently, women generally lean away from the competition within the workforce according to Sheryl. In my opinion, Sheryl offers helpful insight into areas where women need to change in order to transform the workforce. As Sheryl alludes to in her speech, however, there remain many other external factors that press against gender equality.
Lastly, in the third point of the commencement, Sheryl referred to a study that stated that as a woman achieve higher levels of success they become less admirable in the eyes of both men and other women, which is not the case for men. Personally, I would like to learn more about this study because the details that lead the researchers to this conclusion are vague. Sheryl claims that the external factors examined within this study were social forces that fought against gender equality. Perhaps these oppressive social forces are out of a woman’s control. Despite this possibility, I wonder whether or not these outside structures would change as women follow Sheryl’s call to change. After all, Sheryl’s description of these factors sound similar to social norms, which are structures defined by culture.
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Submitted Version of 03/19/13:
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