I couldn't believe my ears last night when I heard Facebook's Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg's response to why women have failed to crack the glass ceiling in corporate America. PBS's Charlie Rose asked her about the lack of women in high positions, and her response was that it's the fault of women because they are not motivated, that they have an "ambition gap". She went on to say, "Until women are as ambitious as men, they're going to lag behind."
Sandberg's not saying women aren't as talented, or deserving, or capable, she's saying that they're lazy, that they don't reach high enough, they don't care enough. These are the same women who are dominating college test scores, graduating in record numbers, securing higher level degrees, but according to Sandberg, these women are ambitionless thumbsuckers and that's why 85% of the high level jobs in corporate American are given to men.
At Barnhard College this last June she had this to say;
Studies show very clearly that in our country, in the college-educated part of the population, men are more ambitious than women. They’re more ambitious the day they graduate from college; they remain more ambitious every step along their career path. We will never close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap.
That's hogwash Ms. Sandberg, and I can't believe you really believe that. Are you saying you're one of the ambitious ones, that the rest of us lower-level employees just aren't as ambitious as you? Have you thought that maybe your rise to the top might be because you think stupid things like this to your male colleagues?
Let's be clear, here's how the scam works; women overachieve, do better on tests and so forth, yet representation by women in corporate America doesn't move-- so we'd better make up an explanation for this travesty... the ambition gap, let's say, and we'd better make sure a women goes around promoting it (afterall, it wouldn't go over very well if a man said garbage like this). Newsflash: women aren't represented because men discriminate, men give the good jobs to their buddies, men don't want women around ruining their party.
Here's something to keep in mind Ms. Sandberg-- you're not speaking for women, you're speaking for the male bosses who have picked you to voice their opinions, and that's a shame. Instead of being a role model and inspiring women, you are a full dose of unreality, a depressant excusing away the indefensible with lame critiques and pop analysis. Don't you think it would be better if you stopped denigrating women for what you call their lack of ambition, and start fighting for women's rightful place in corporate America.
A few years ago you wrote a defense of Larry Summers, the Harvard Dean who decided to make national headlines by declaring that women just aren't as smart as men, in another failed attempt to explain the obvious. I can understand this, Summers was your mentor, and you were being loyal to the man who gave you your start, and so you gave the man who said you were inferior cover, fair enough. Now you work for a man, Mark Zuckerberg, whose business had its start by developing a rating system for women at Harvard. I wonder, does he now rate a young woman's ambition as cleverly as he rated their looks?
It's a small club we know. Steve Jobs didn't look very far for his advice, consulting only a few people on the decisions he made. It's probably similar over at Facebook, and its CEO is probably using Sanberg as his female model to draw conclusions from. That would be a sad miscalculation as Sheryl Sandberg does not reflect a view that many women share.
