Lean In Book Summary

Book Summary

15 min

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Brief Summary

Women are still underrepresented in leadership roles in every professional field. They face biases in the workplace that can prevent them from being promoted, such as gender stereotypes and lack of professional mentors. Women often struggle with self-doubt and an unfair share of the burden of raising a family. Women also tend to scale back their professional responsibilities in preparation of having a child. Rather than relying on structural changes to end gender inequality, women need to make individual choices and take risks to promote themselves to leadership positions. Women should lean into their jobs before having children, take on more responsibility, let go of self-doubt and perfectionism, and choose a spouse who is an equal partner at home. However, women cannot do it alone. Ultimately men and women must work together to achieve gender parity in the workplace.

About the Author

Sheryl Sandberg is the Chief Operating Officer of Facebook and founder of Leanin.org. She became the first woman to serve on the Board of Facebook in 2012. Under her leadership, Facebook went from operating at a multimillion-dollar loss to bringing in profits exceeding $20 billion as of 2018. Forbes named Sandberg #11 in their list of Power Women (2018), #12 in their list of America’s Self-Made Women (2018) and #1425 in their list of Billionaires (2019). She resides in California, USA with her two children.

Topics

Career & Success Biography & Memoir

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Key Insights

Women hold far fewer leadership roles than men in every professional field, including business, law, academia, government, and entertainment. To achieve gender parity in the workplace, women need to “lean in” to challenges to break into leadership roles in male-dominated. Diversity in the workplace is not just good for women. Male-dominated workplaces can lead to blind spots and complacency, and increased diversity leads to more innovation and greater financial earnings. However, because individual women don’t promote themselves or take risks as often men, there is a leadership gap in high-level roles. Women must stop relying on big, structural, societal changes, and take individual action to promote themselves to these positions.

Women face gender-specific obstacles in the workplace that are rooted in sexist stereotypes. For example, traits that are valued and considered positive men are often criticized in women, such as directness and self-promotion. Women also struggle to find professional mentors and develop meaningful one-on-one professional relationships, in part because men are wary of mentoring their female colleagues to avoid the risk of accusations of impropriety. Women should focus on developing meaningful connections where a mentorship relationship can naturally develop.

Women should focus on improving their communication and soliciting feedback from not only superiors but everyone who can provide a helpful point of view. They should also ensure they are not scaling back their workload in anticipation of child-rearing. Many women take on less responsibility even years before they give birth, but this can lead to an increased wage gap and fewer professional responsibilities. Therefore, one of the most important professional choices a woman can make is choosing a partner who is willing to share responsibility for personal duties and childrearing. If both spouses share the responsibility equally, the pressure will not always be on women to raise children and take care of the home. Women and men need to work together to end gender inequality in the workplace.

Gender Inequality In The Workplace

There is a huge disparity in the numbers of men and women in leadership positions, despite a relatively equal population size and educational levels. In every major professional field, including business, law, academia, medicine, entertainment, and politics, only between 10 to 30 percent of leadership roles are held by women. There are very few female world leaders.

In corporate America, women hold about 25 percent of senior or executive positions, and only 6 percent of CEO positions. Women only make up about a fifth of board seats. If the numbers continue at this rate, men and women will not have equal representation in business leadership positions until 2085. Similarly, only 22 percent of women make partners in law firms, 27 percent of women become college presidents, and only 17 percent of top-grossing film creators in Hollywood are women.

Women are also paid less than men. As of 2010, women in the US still made only 77 cents on every dollar a man-made. In Europe, the pay gap is 84 cents on the dollar.

Women also struggle with self-doubt, which can prevent them from...