In 2011, Forbes magazine called Sandberg the fifth most powerful woman in the world. For today’s young working woman, Sandberg may indeed be the most powerful, period. Long before Lean In appeared in bookstores this year, millions had checked out her 2010 TED Talk, in which she offered women prescriptive advice on how to reach the C-suite. While calling today’s women lucky, Sandberg cites the sorry news that women are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world. Numbers say it all. Of the Fortune 500 companies, only twenty-one are led by women. Of 195 independent countries in the world, all but seventeen are led by men. Meanwhile, in the United States, two-thirds of married male senior managers have children, while only a third of their female counterparts can make the same claim.
While offering her prescriptions for change, Sandberg comes clean about some of the most difficult truths for working women. Top among these: while success and likability are positively correlated for men, the opposite is true for women. Saying a woman is “very ambitious is not a compliment in our culture,” writes Sandberg. “Aggressive and hard-charging women violate unwritten rules about acceptable social conduct. Men are continually applauded for being ambitious and powerful and successful, but women who display these same traits often pay a social penalty. Female accomplishments come at a cost.” Finally, she shares, “When reviewing a woman, the reviewer will often voice the concern, ‘While she’s really good at her job, she’s just not as well liked by her peers.’”
I say: bless her for telling it like it is. She confronts and exposes some tough truths, among them: women need to smile more than men when negotiating for a raise. Smile, and continue to smile.
In fact, I think of her comments when I speak to Daisy Kling, a third-year Queen’s student, currently on a transfer to Britain’s Durham University. “Sexism is invisible, but it’s real,” says Kling. “Girls have more pressure on them to behave a certain way. You think you have the same rights as boys, so it’s hard to understand why you feel held back. But there’s a lot of pressure on girls to act ninety different ways at once: you have to be smart, you want people to take you seriously, you have to be attractive—but not too attractive, not slutty. You have to have experience, but not too much experience.”
Sandberg’s well-trademarked advice is aimed, in many ways, at Kling’s generation. It amounts to this: lean into the boardroom table, not back; don’t decide to “leave before you leave”—in other words, to opt out of the fast track before you’ve even had children; and make your partner a real partner. Her focus is what she calls the “Leadership Ambition Gap,” and she’s determined to help women eliminate the internal barriers that keep them from the corner office. All valuable, bracing stuff—especially for those about to embark on a professional journey.
Neither Sandberg nor Slaughter airbrushes the truth. As I write this, Slaughter’s book has yet to be published. But I know from reading her Atlantic piece, and her New York Times review of Lean In, that her take and mine are aligned. This is a woman who admits to the complexities of long-distance parenting a troubled fourteen-year-old son. She confesses that “juggling high-level government work with the needs of two teenage boys was not possible.” Says Slaughter: “Having it all, at least for me, depended almost entirely on what type of job I had.” In other words, she believes there are times when you have to lean back. And while Slaughter’s version of leaning back means trading one high-octane superstar position for an illustrious second, you have to love her candor.
As a young professional, I could have used both Sandberg’s and Slaughter’s advice. As I said, there was no blueprint back in 1977, when I started my career, two weeks after my wedding. When I gave birth in 1984, the term “second shift” had yet to be popularized. And when I proposed job-sharing to my editors at Maclean’s magazine—job-sharing with the talented Canadian author, editor, and journalist Val Ross, no less—I was turned down. To them, the idea was too unwieldy, preposterous.
Motherhood changed my priorities. Before I had Nicholas, I gladly stayed at work all Saturday night when a political leadership race demanded that we close the magazine on a Sunday morning. After I became a mother, the trade-offs got tougher.
Here is what I learned: I had to create my own exits, and my own opportunities. I wanted to know my son as a toddler, and as a teenager, too. To be the mother I wanted to be, I would make compromises at work. To be the professional I wanted to be, I would make compromises at home. With those decisions came many blessings, and a couple of deep disappointments.
As a mother, I have worked full-time, part-time, and flextime: I have stayed at home and enjoyed a journalism fellowship year back at university. I did the latter when my son was two. In other words, I experimented with it all, and tried to time it well. I was entertainment editor of Maclean’s, Canada’s national newsmagazine, with a young son, and I was a vice principal of McGill University, with that same son at university himself. I could not have done the second job with a younger child.
When I look back, I see that I followed well what Sandberg advocates. I leaned in, hard. I did not leave before I left. And I made my partner a true partner: my husband and I separated when Nicholas was five, but we continued to share all daily duties related to our son, and all of the pleasures, too. As an independent television producer, based close to Nicholas’s school, Will was able to respond to midday emergencies in a way I was not. We were no longer husband and wife, but we functioned beautifully as a family, and we still do. Early on, I decided I would rather have my family than a financial settlement. As a result, we didn’t let lawyers get in the middle of our arrangement. We started having family dinners once a week, from the very beginning; that grew to taking shared trips with our son, and sharing cottage time. It was a novel arrangement when it began, less so now. In the end, we shared everything. The more we shared, the more smoothly things went.
Over the years, I won five National Magazine Awards for my work, and multiple others. I didn’t travel a lot, but when there was a speaking engagement, I was free to go. Still, there were many opportunities I chose to forgo. More than once, the London bureau of the magazine was up for grabs. I could never apply, much as I wanted to. And I knew that without a more diverse résumé, I was unlikely to be selected as editor of the magazine, a job I once dearly wanted.
In 2001, when I threw my hat in the ring, I was not chosen. I remember being encouraged to interview for the position. My immediate response: “They aren’t going to choose a woman.” To which came the less-than-resounding “You don’t know that.” But I did. I knew it in my bones. Actually, what I knew was they weren’t going to choose me.
After several rounds of rigorous interviews, the publisher poked his head in my office one noon hour. “We won’t be pursuing your candidacy any further,” he said, standing in the doorway, an awkward look on his face. I was eating a salad at my desk: mid-forkful, I received this news. I couldn’t help but wonder: Would they tell a man this way? Wouldn’t they invite him in for a short talk? Who knows, but I was scalded. An insider was chosen, and on his first day he invited me into his office. He asked me what I wanted: I said a magazine column. From there I developed a writing voice, one that gave birth to this book. It’s a twisty road.
So much of this comes down to pacing, balance, and juggling—and choices. I took my career seriously; I took being a mother seriously; and for more than a decade, I took being a lover seriously as well. I had a full-time job, a vibrant speaking career, a deep connection with my son, a fabulous relationship with Jake. Always, there were trade-offs. I didn’t write my column as often as I should have, in those years when Nicholas was at home. Most nights I got home late: too often, I was trundling in with groceries after seven o’clock, cooking fast for a hungry boy. In a long-distance relationship, Jake had to do too much of the traveling in the winter months. Everyone