Why Sheryl Sandberg and Other Women’s Rights Advocates Need to Get Their Facts Straight
Earlier this week, I started to write an article about how all of us, especially women, need to be more audacious in our quest for success. This is not a novel theme. Countless books and articles replete with anecdotes relaying personal experiences have carved out substantial space on the internet. Nearly all of them refer to Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, a modern-day, some would call, manifesto, imploring women to “lean in” as opposed to the “lean back” stance some women (literally) assume in meetings, sitting in corner and not at the table, and (figuratively) pushing less for opportunity and promotions. Sandberg claims that women pass up the chance to take on more responsibility at work because they may want to reserve time for having a family. Consequently, they end up with less meaningful jobs and are less likely to return to work after maternity leave.
Lean In echoes much of Betty Friedan’s iconic book, The Feminine Mystique, and hit bookshelves exactly 50 years after Friedan’s publication. Not surprisingly, Sandberg read Friedan’s book just before penning her own. Just as Sandberg tells women to “lean in”, Friedan proposes that women reject the “feminine mystique,” the social canon that dictates that women define themselves and their worth through home and family. At the time, women’s colleges, magazines, and advertising agencies actively promoted the message that bliss was found only in marriage and motherhood. What more could a woman want? But it was that compartmentalization of the woman into the role of homemaker that Friedan argued was detrimental to the woman herself and society and accounted for many unfulfilled women (Friedan surveyed graduates of her alma mater, Smith College; her findings formulated the basis for her book).
To be sure, although written half a century later, Sandberg reaches out to readers who are still battered by bias (and lack of paid maternity leave). However, the premise of the book seems to rely on a “ghost” cornerstone, the now quite well-known and often publicized, Hewlett Packard (HP) internal report that found that women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Men apply if they think they meet 60 percent of the requirements. As I searched for the original article in order to link it to my post, I seemed to run into second generation citations: articles quoting other articles that mentioned the finding, but none of them citing the actual “study.” The Harvard Business Review (HBR) cited a Forbes article; the Forbes article cited nothing. Sandberg cited the article, A business case for women, published in The McKinsey Quarterly which simply referred to the internal research at HP. But that was it. Nowhere could I find methodology, sample size, questions asked, demographics related to the population analyzed, or motivation behind the study. Nowhere could I find anything more than an apparent observation that somehow managed to wriggle its way into the mainstream. So, how is it that such conjecture gleaned such attention? How did anecdote become viewed as “fact”?
Furthermore, how is it that none of the writers who propagated the findings were bothered by the lack of evidence or authenticity of this report? Perhaps they were too busy putting their own spin on the findings: The relatively benign language used in the McKinsey report relays a generalization about action — Women only apply for open jobs if they think they meet 100 percent of the criteria listed. Whereas the mainstream media seems to anticipate the underlying motivation — Men are confident about their ability at 60%, but women don’t feel confident until they’ve checked off each item on the list (Forbes). In my opinion, analysis of the observed behavior is quite a leap; concluding that women’s confidence is to blame, is both convenient and incendiary.
Tara Sophia Mohr, author of HBR’s article, Why Women Don’t Apply for Jobs Unless They’re 100% Qualified, drew from the Forbes piece, stating at the outset that she was skeptical of the conclusion of the HP report, that women need to have more faith in themselves, “because the times I had decided not to apply for a job because I didn’t meet all the qualifications, faith [in] myself wasn’t exactly the issue. I suspected I wasn’t alone.” Fair enough. Although, let’s keep in mind that this was not the conclusion of the HP report, but rather a supposition from a short article about the confidence gap between the sexes. Nevertheless, in order to further probe this suspicion, she surveyed one thousand American professional men and women and asked them why they didn’t apply for job postings in which they were interested. The least common reason was, “I was following the guidelines about who should apply,” which 9% of men and 15% of women confirmed. Similarly, relatively few were worried that they would unable to do the job well, 10% of men and 12% of women. In fact, what most determined whether or not one applied was the belief that if they did not meet all of the qualifications, they would not get hired (46% men versus 41% women). Mohr concludes that it is not actually a women’s mistrust of her own abilities (in fact in most categories men and women score similarly on this questionnaire) but rather a misunderstanding about how recruitment works, “They didn’t see the hiring process as one where advocacy, relationships, or a creative approach to framing one’s expertise could overcome not having the skills and experiences outlined in the job qualifications.”
Many of the reasons for not applying seem to overlap, but there are some subtle differences that are worth exploring. It seems that for the majority of professionals questioned, simply believing that they would not be hired was sufficient reason to not apply because either, “I didn’t want to waste my time and energy” or “I didn’t want to put myself out there if I was likely to fail” (68% of men versus 61% of women). Not surprisingly neither sex was willing to put in effort if the return seemed nonexistent. Somewhat pronounced differences between the sexes emerge with respect to worry about failure (13% men versus 22% women) and following guidelines (9% men versus 15% women), with nearly double the percentage of women citing these reasons, compared to men, although the overall percentages are still relatively low. Especially when realized in the context of the “parent study” that prompted Mohr’s further analysis. In fact, the HP report lacked any information about what percentage of women were part of the cohort who needed to check off every qualification off on their list — one can only assume all women were universally implicated in this phenomenon. And that seems just a bit ridiculous, doesn’t it?
Despite her original and promising skepticism, Mohr sees value in the elusive HP report because “For those women who have not been applying for jobs because they believe the stated qualifications must be met, the statistic is a wake-up call that not everyone is playing the game that way. When those women know others are giving it a shot even when they don’t meet the job criteria, they feel free to do the same.” And yes, for the 37% of women (and 22% of men, by the way) who feel this way, it is important to know that not everyone is playing by the rules. But I am still left questioning what possible value can be found in a report, the existence of which, is in question. What value can be found in using a faulty “statistic” as the premise for examining just how confident or how predictable we are?
In my last post, I wrote extensively about the the subliminal bias (and blatant bias) still so insidious in our culture. There is no question that women are still struggling and working harder than men to overcome feelings of inadequacy and to be recognized for what they have achieved. But when we mistakenly tout anecdote as fact, we undermine ourselves and our cause in the process. We give the opposition fodder for toppling a particular unsubstantiated claim that risks the credibility of our underlying argument.
However, perhaps what is most concerning is that, as women, not only must we defend ourselves against the very real obstacles we encounter, but now we must be wary of so-called claims that attempt to strip away any progress we have made — Trojan horse claims that on the outside appear to be worthwhile and useful tools for improvement, but upon closer inspection, are actually unsubstantiated and insulting. Only one article took any issue with this, a Huffington Post piece by Curt Rice, in which he admonishes Sandberg and others for repeatedly advertising the HP numbers: “We do not know if it is true. We can’t. There’s no identifiable source. Keeping the myth alive hurts the greater research program and the social changes it can provoke.”
In spite of the inequality, we should know better than latching onto purported assertions that so obviously lump all women together as one uninteresting entity and that don’t seem to incite any protest or any demand for authentication. Rice asks, “Are women so unexceptionally homogenous?” Certainly not. However, I do think the relative ease with which educated women accepted the statistic begs the question: are we so desensitized to negative portrayals of women that outrageous allegations seem innocuous?
According to a recent TED talk given by Julia Galef, we all have selective bias. We are all driven to show that studies are either strongly or poorly designed based on our own convictions. Even when we think we are objective, we are subjective. She claims that what we all need, if we want to improve our judgment, is to learn to change our reflexive emotions: to feel proud instead of ashamed when we notice we might have been wrong, or to feel intrigued instead of defensive when we find information that contradicts our beliefs. She ends her talk by posing a choice to the audience, “What do you most yearn for?” she asks, “Do you yearn to defend your own beliefs? Or do you yearn to see the world as clearly as you possibly can?”
If we truly wish to progress as women in our personal and professional lives, yes, we need to take responsibility for our short-comings. Yes, we need to realize our own self-worth despite the continuous barrage of micro-assaults that stokes our self-doubt. We need to be aware of the unfairness that persists, subliminally, unbeknownst to the perpetrators, and sometimes even the victims. But, we must also be discerning in what we accept as true descriptors of our behavior and reject the homogenous and predictable way in which we are portrayed. Otherwise, how are the accusations examined here, that lack of confidence keeps us paralyzed, any different from the accusations of the past that kept us isolated and compartmentalized into tidy roles, because we supposedly lacked the ability to think independently?
Lauren Tanabe is a freelance writer based in Detroit with a Ph.D. in Pharmacology and Molecular Signaling from Columbia University. She is currently looking for opportunities to tell stories that reflect the poetry and beauty inherent in science, as well as all things sad and humorous related to academia, motherhood, and found tucked into the random and ridiculous moments of everyday life.
