Well, I finished reading "Lean In" last year.  But for some reason, I never finished reviewing the chapters.  I decided that I should correct that by getting to the end of the book before March, when we'll be celebrating Women's History Month.

I'd welcome thoughts and comments on these reviews if you have any.

“Lean In,” by Sheryl Sandberg

Chapter Ten:  “Let’s Start Talking About It”

It’s clear that Sheryl Sandberg is not simply writing a book, she’s on a mission.  And this chapter is her invitation to the rest of us to join her in that mission.  She begins the chapter by thinking back to her youth, and how so many of us in the 80’s and 90’s didn’t really want to take on that “feminist” label.  We thought, mistakenly, that the battles had been fought and the war had been won.  We didn’t realize that in rejecting the labels, we were ignoring the fact that gaining equality is a marathon, not a sprint.

  

Photo:  aware.org.sg

After years of working hard to “fit in by pushing herself to prove to others that women could accomplish as much as men; and watching skilled female colleagues drop out of the workforce through frustration, lack of support by companies and partners; or simply “scaling back their ambitions to meet outsized demands,” Sandberg decided it was time to speak out.

During the remainder of the chapter Sandberg returns to the biases and old-fashioned perspectives that she has written about in the previous nine chapters.  She suggests that maybe in order to change our perception of what being a feminist means, we need to change the definition.  A feminist is “someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”  This is a definition that most of us can get behind.  And if we’ve read this far through Sandberg’s book, we’ve been given the tools to start making the changes happen around us step by incremental step.

Photo:  Michellefreed.com

And I’ll end this chapter review as Sandberg does:  “the result of creating a more equal environment will not just be better performance for our organizations, but quite likely greater happiness for all.”