Lean In

Sheryl Sandberg's new book "Lean In" is getting all sorts of press and jokes. A couple bloggers I really respect actually read it and recommended it, so I went to the Cornell Bookstore last Tuesday and asked about it. The man staffing the information desk said, "It's not even on the floor yet: we got three copies this morning and you're the second person to ask for one today. I'll go get you one." I took it.

It took me four days to read, since I've got other work to be doing, and I really enjoyed it. It's funny! It's right about a lot of things. The book doesn't aspire to be an academic publication, a real advice book, or  even a book with answers; it seems to want to speak the truth about what's really happening (unconscious bias exists in all of us, despite changing social mores) and what we can do to reach a more truly equal society. It made me think about my own choices. Especially lately, many of my career decisions are influenced by family and work-life balance questions: I have spent this year working across the US, away from my Minnesota family, in an effort to find out what I can do and where I should go from here. I've decided I want to be in Minnesota next year, which dramatically curtails my academic employment options. This is not a recipe for academic superstardom or even success. Instead I should be willing to move to whatever continent best serves my career (including Japan or the UK, both of which have great postdocs in my field). We all have to make difficult decisions, though, about what we truly want and what we are willing to sacrifice for. Sandberg doesn't downplay this and her book is not about just hiring a nanny and a housekeeper and heading off to a 70-hour-a-week job without regard to one's truest desires.

The book is unabashedly about encouraging women with high career goals to really reach for them -- to lean in. The main message is, "Go for it -- you'll figure it out (often with the help of a supportive spouse)." "Lean In" aims to expand peoples' ideas of what options are available, reminding us that if you ask (for a parking space for pregnant ladies, for teleconferencing now and then, for a promotion or a lateral move) you will (often) receive. Worth remembering.

A lot of the news coverage has been simplistic and sensational. Anyone who says, "It's easy for Sandberg to say...", "What about stay-at home moms? They deserve respect too!", "She's just telling me to hire a babysitter and abandon my children!", or "Why should I have to be like a man?" is demonstrating ignorance of the content. You can't have a good discussion with these folks. It's like people who think the XYZ affair was about a zipper.

The Mash-up

What I'd really like to see, though, is a conversation contrasting "Lean In" with "Radical Homemakers", the other most interesting book of my spring. "Radical Homemakers" is about combining feminism and radicalism to fight this situation that much of the middle class in the US find themselves in -- to make time for all the work you need to do, you need to outsource food/cleanliness/clothing/health/child care to others, and to afford the take-out or delivered meals/dry cleaning/gym fees/child care, you need to work at a high-paying job. It reminds me of a book I remember reading in college or early grad school, The Two-Income Trap*, with an ecological and DIY twist.  The original reason we didn't have this problem is that the home was the locus of production, as "Radical Homemakers" points out: men and women did some different work, but all were involved in food/clothing/health/child & elder care. Then men and women moved out of the home to differing degrees as our economies changed and production moved outside the home. Now we're at the most extreme point in human history, the point at which kids don't know carrots come from the ground and bread is baked from wheat and clothing can be made outside a factory. (Kids these days!) If men and women in the US throw themselves fully into production outside the home, who is going to do the child care, the elder care, the health care, the food production? Is it really healthy, psychologically, for humans to specialize to such a degree? Shouldn't we all do a little cooking and a little cleaning so that we know what it's like? What's the ecological cost of our specialization? On the other hand, "Radical Homemakers" and "Lean In" both point out that neither men alone nor women alone are going to solve our problems: we are going to have to cooperate.

"Radical Homemakers" is the dropping-out counterpoint to "Lean In." I think they're both right. How can that be? Discuss!

* Reading about this book now is interesting: 1) I read something by Elizabeth Warren before she was famous-famous! 2) Take a look at this 2004 article about housing prices and bankruptcy with your 2007-2009 crash glasses on....