A Critique of the Lean-In Method by A. Lopez
In December of 2010, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg gave a TED talk titled, “Why we have too few women leaders”. Sandberg not only gave the talk in an effort to analyze why there is a smaller percentage of women than men reaching the top of their professions, but also to offer several words of advice on how to get ahead. There are three points Sandberg teaches the audience, which collectively form her Lean-In method. The points of advice are one, “Sit at the table”; two, “Make your partner a real partner”; and three, “Don’t leave before you leave”. These points have sparked a global conversation, and have also been the inspiration for Sandberg’s books titled Lean-In, and Lean-In for graduates. The talk and method have inspired many women around the world to speak up, and for some women who struggle with anxiety preceding presentations, watching Sandberg speak her thoughts and get her point across, does motivate them to study and learn how to engage an audience as well as she does. We should acknowledge the method’s positive impact, but it is important to critique whether or not Sandberg’s suggestions include women who may not have the same opportunities to “lean in” as do white American upper class working women. In short, the conversation needs to go further. For example, the TEDx talk controversially fails to acknowledge the broader and complicated reasons women are hindered from receiving higher positions, and further distinguishes a privileged group of women as a dominant representation of all women in the workforce. Women of color cannot simply “lean in” and negotiate their pay for a broad number of reasons, and for these women the workforce can be an oppressive space. To further understand how Sandberg’s well-intentioned advice does not extend toward working class women of color, we can examine the characters in Milcha Sanchez-Scott’s play Latina, where the Latina characters spotlight the micro-aggressions, sexisms, judgments, and repressions experienced by marginalized working class women of color.
Sanchez-Scott’s play Latina revolves around a young 23-year-old Chicana woman named Sarita who works at a domestic agency that provides white American female clients with illegal and “cheap” domestic/housekeeping services. Sarita is overworked in the agency and her skills and qualities are overlooked. The main character Felix Sanchez often answers the business’s telephone and takes credit for Sarita’s work, even when it is clear to the audience that Sarita is running the business and investing herself fully into assisting the immigrant Latina employees who work there. To explain and deconstruct Sarita’s experiences and that of the immigrant working class woman, we can use the concept of intersectionality, a theory which states that the overlapping of social identities such as race, gender, and social classes contributes to distinct systematic oppressions and discriminations for an individual.
In July of 1991, American civil rights advocate and leading scholar Kimberle Williams Crenshaw published an essay titled “Mapping the Margins: Intersectionality, Identity Politics, and Violence against Women of Color”. In the essay, Crenshaw asserted, “I used the concept of intersectionality to denote the various ways in which race and gender interact to shape the multiple dimensions of Black women’s employment experiences” (Crenshaw 1244). Latina women too can relate in solidarity to specific employment experiences, and “Because of their intersectional identity as both women and of color within discourses that are shaped to respond to one or the other, women of color are marginalized within both” (Crenshaw 1244). In this sense, Sarita continuously internalizes racism, while Felix simultaneously creates sexist spaces around her and her fellow Latina co-workers. Through Sarita, it is clear that the borders of her different identities affect her experience as a working class woman, and if Sarita were to follow Sandberg’s advice and “sit at the table” in efforts to negotiate her pay, she would have a higher chance of jeopardizing the fate of not only herself, but of the immigrant women with whom she works with. It is difficult for a woman like Sarita to file a lawsuit of gender discrimination against her employer for fear of losing her job. It is also difficult to file a lawsuit of racial discrimination in regards to the pay discrepancy for her immigrant co-workers. Sarita and her fellow undocumented co-workers, must then “suffer in silence for fear that the security of their families will be jeopardized should they seek help or otherwise call attention to themselves” (Crenshaw 1249).
Another message Sandberg sends is that “women systematically underestimate their own abilities”. A study shows that “men attribute their success to themselves, and women attribute it to other external factors”, and knowing this matters because women seem to be limiting their opportunities and not acknowledging their hard work. For a women of color, the internalization goes beyond sexism and includes racism. Sarita’s experience as a working class woman of color is delicate in a sense that she receives the oppressive treatment not only from American culture but from Latina culture. During a conversation with the character named Margarita (La Cubana), Sarita receives criticism for not supporting and assisting the women enough. Margarita tells Sarita, “I know who I am” and “You are pocha. Mexican trying to be gringa” (Sanchez-Scott 120). The conversation asserts that Sarita isn’t succeeding in her career goals because the American workplace is aware of her attempt at assimilation, and prevents her efforts because she is a “dark face, pocha prieta, who don’t tell the truth”, as Margarita says (Sanchez-Scott 120). In the workforce a person like Sarita, an American citizen but also a woman of color, struggles with the consequences of segmented assimilation.
In 1993, prominent Cuban-American sociologist Alejandro Portes, and UCLA sociology professor Min Zhou, theorized the sociological model of Segmented Assimilation to explain how immigrants and/or American citizen children of immigrants adopt aspects of their new culture. Segmented Assimilation asserts that social and economic barriers cause downward or hindered mobility for marginalized groups, and creates oppositional forms of culture. When a person like Sarita attempts to assimilate into the American workforce, she is hindered because of the color of her skin. Sarita expresses these difficulties in pursuing her dream of becoming an actress by saying, “I am too dark and freaky for Eight is Enough. They don’t have stupid Mexicans playing nurses on prime time, you know” (Sanchez-Scott 93). Here, Sarita see herself as not fitting in and systematically hinders herself because of her race and not just because of her gender. Because her access to American society is limited, Sarita remains an employee at the domestic agency where her skills and qualifications are taken advantage of, and where she is overworked. Sarita criticizes American TV for not wanting people like her, but also internalizes this rejection and uses it to reject herself. When Sandberg says that “women systematically underestimate their own abilities”, it involves an inadequacy internalized because of one’s gender, but it isn’t necessarily including an underestimating of the self because one’s race. What is interesting to observe is that oppositional factors come into play, as the immigrant women at the agency criticize Sarita for those same attempts at assimilation. Attempting to assimilate exposes people like Sarita to opposition from their own culture, leaving them stranded between a culture that refuses to accept them and a culture that accuses them of abandoning their roots. During a conversation between Sarita and an undocumented co-worker named Lola, Lola tells Sarita, “Then why don’t you ever stand up for us? All you want to be is a gringa destenia” (Sanchez-Scott 112). It is difficult for Sarita to develop relationships with her undocumented co-workers because of her segmented assimilation. As a result, Sarita works in an unsupportive environment.
As the American workforce and further white upper class working women like Sheryl Sandberg continue to advocate for women to reach for higher positions, there is a failure to recognize intersectional issues that affect women of color. These efforts from American society to politicize the experiences of women in the workforce should be praised for raising the issue of gender discrimination in the workplace, but the efforts have mostly disregarded marginalized experiences. Crenshaw explains that “ignoring difference within groups contributes to tension among groups” and is “another problem of identity politics” (Crenshaw 1242). In recognizing its disregard for marginalized women through language, American mainstream feminism can take the first step towards allowing women of color the opportunity to “lean in” in the workforce. Sheryl Sandberg modestly acknowledges not knowing all the answers when she says, “I want to be very clear that this speech comes with no judgments. I don't have the right answer”. Sandberg’s recognition that “it’s not that simple” opens up the window of opportunity to “lean in” and sit at the table for women who feel excluded from Sandberg’s feminist approach, and allows for those in her privileged group to consider thinking beyond borders.
This research essay was awarded at the annual CSGS department (center for sexualities and gender studies) Student Research and Creative Arts Conference on Genders and Sexualities at Cal State Los Angeles.