Sheryl Sandberg Lean In Analysis

Superior Essays
In this day in age, it is difficult to imagine that there are still inequalities between men and women but the truth is, there are still gender gaps in today’s society. In Sheryl Sandberg’s, “Lean In: What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” she discusses the issue of the leadership ambition gender gap in the workplace. On the other hand, Saul Kaplan discusses the gender gap in attendance of colleges in his article, “The Plight of Young Males”. Taking into consideration both writings, women are still not treated equal in this society, especially in the workplace.
Sheryl Sandberg tells the audience of her grandmother, “Girlie’s”, story. Her grandmother was taken out of high school in order to help support the family during the Depression. Luckily, a teacher took interest in her education and encouraged her parents’ to let her go back to school. Sandberg’s grandmother accomplished many things after graduating high school, like attending and graduating from U.C Berkeley (Sandberg 643). “Girlie” showed ambition in her education, in financial ventures and in her work, but all this would not be possible if someone had not encouraged her to continue her education. This story is used to compare society then and
…show more content…
On the other hand, Saul Kaplan discusses the issue of the college attendance gap in his article, “The Plight of Young Males”. Women are still not treated equally as men in this society, especially in the workforce. This is important to discuss because as a society, we like to think that we have advanced past gender roles and it is hard to imagine there being any inequalities between men and women but the truth is, there are still gender gaps in today’s society. One should be involved because it can be you, your daughter or son, your niece or nephew, or ultimately someone who you love who can be in the middle of these

Related Documents

  • Improved Essays

    But by concentrating on how to improve the “equal opportunities for women, we have taken our eyes off an alarming trend” (732). On 2011, Kaplan visited a college campus and was shocked to see a drop of young men attending, “Where have the men gone?” he questions (733). The census in 2011, reported 51% of men in the United States are between the ages of 18 to 24, and only 40% of the college student body are men (733). Kaplan’s fear escalated once he read a great book called, Raising Cain by Michael Thompson, where he predicts, “if today’s trends continue unaltered, the last young man in the US to get a college degree will do so in 2068” (qtd. in Kaplan 733).…

    • 992 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Because of her personal feelings on and experiences with gender inequality, Sheryl Sandberg, in her chapter “Success and Likeability,” sought to validate her experiences to a broader audience. She argues that women must embrace their success, be comfortable with their own power, and not attempt to please everyone, through personal anecdotes, comparison-and-contrast techniques, and rhetorical questions. Sandberg begins her argument that women must embrace their own success using a series of personal anecdotes that reflect on her internal, physical progression of thoughts that have allowed her to develop this argument in her own life. She explains the story of when she won a scholarship in college along with six other men and did not bask in the glory as they did because she did not want to complicate her college experience (Sandberg 41).…

    • 848 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Great Essays

    The assimilation of women has altered the competition of young men because they must outfox men and women by any means necessary to express dominance. Furthermore, women are engraving a mark in history through the means of leaving their homes and searching for work in fields such as Law, Medical, and Engineering. They have a strong desire to be on par with young American men. Kimmel asserts, “Few people feel that sort of power even as adults: Most of us “have to” work, we are weighed down by family and workplace obligations. But even when they feel powerless, unlike women, men feel entitled to power” (59).…

    • 1391 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    “Since the 1980s, more women than men have been graduating from college in America. According to data from 2012, the percentage of women who enrolled in college after high school rose to 71%, while the percentage of men remained stagnant at 61%” (Andersen par 5). However, today sexism still exists in some areas. Although it is not legal, some employers when looking to hire someone may choose a male applicant over a female applicant based solely on gender. Some jobs today may even offer a higher salary to a man than what would be offered to a woman.…

    • 1472 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Not a Man’s World Elaine McArdle and Michelle Conlin are writers for magazines such as The Boston Globe and Business Week. McArdle and Conlin articles are about boys falling behind in college education and girls becoming the lead gender in higher education. McArdle and Conlin argue that event though were the leading beneficiaries’ is education it has change in recent years. Their arguments of the articles suggest that boys today are becoming less interested in higher education due to their ability to learn and succeed in school. McArdle and Conlin also argue that women today are leading to become more educated than men because of their ability to learn faster than men.…

    • 1361 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    For over thirty years women have been fighting to work their way up to professional ladder; yet in 2009 only 6.3% of corporate top earners were women. In her article “Swagger Like Us” Ann Friedman explores three solutions on how women can become high achieving individuals. Clay Shirky believes that the best way is for women to act like a man; being aggressive and crossing gender lines will allow them to be taken seriously. He states that colleges should offer a class to teach women self-advancement, as they do with self-defense. By being assertive a woman can make strides towards serious workplace gains, for example demanding a raise or a better title.…

    • 605 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women’s roles in professional settings are very controversial. Should they be at home with their family, should they be working, or should they do both? In “Lean In: What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” by Sheryl Sandberg, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter, and “Why men still can’t have it all” by Richard Dormant they all show us their differing opinions on whether women can truly “have it all”, whether women are treated equal to men in the work world, and whether men should play a greater role at home so their wives can work a fulfilling job without having to take on all the responsibility at home.…

    • 1200 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women In The 1920s

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Female high school students were expected to go to college. They usually attend a school with no male students or a private college. The females that attend college usually became teachers or nurses; these were said to be the “suitable” profession for a women. NCSU, North Carolina State University opened a housing for female students but they were not welcome at all. This created a big headline in 1921 called “Women Not Wanted Here”.…

    • 830 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Superior Essays

    (Infoplease,2000) Although the issue has entered into modern day society, and has been mostly fixed with different laws and acts that provide women with equal rights in the workforce, inequality is still occurring in the U.S today. For example, Wal-Mart, America’s largest employer, has only 33% of female employees. This statistic shows how even the biggest companies still neglect women in their employment process. (Infoplease,2000)…

    • 2047 Words
    • 9 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Improved Essays

    The glass ceiling prevents women from rising to the highest positions of organizations in male dominated professions. This is a huge problem because woman deserve to have equal opportunities as men. “A working woman with a college degree will earn, on average, hundreds of thousands of dollars less than a man who does the same work” (Newman, 1006). The only thing that is holding women back is their gender. In the past, men usually were the ones who earned money to support their families.…

    • 1269 Words
    • 6 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Improved Essays

    She gives three common assumptions people have about the gap: women are paid less for the same amount of work, women are disheartened to aim for higher-paying occupations, and gender discrimination hinders women in all fields. Then, she goes on to argue that the so-called existence of the gap is based on inaccurate information because it puts together men and women working in the same profession, but working different amount of hours. Also, she notes that women tend to go into careers that help people, such as nursing or teaching, while men go for more rigorous, physical work, like engineering or construction. She justifies her argument even more by saying that men take up higher positions because they do not care for leisure time nor strive to work for fewer hours. Unlike women, who typically like to have flexible hours in case of emergency matters and personal time that has no relation to work.…

    • 1192 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Improved Essays
  • Decent Essays

    Myth Of Gender Inequality

    • 124 Words
    • 1 Pages

    Gender inequality is not a new tendency on this decade. “Gender difference is the most ancient, most universal, and most powerful origin of many morally valued conceptualizations of everything else in the world around us” (Sandra Harding; 1986).Although the movements that had been created in many countries in order to stop this phenomenon of gender inequality and to move in a gender-neutral attitudes concerning discrimination in schools and in workplace it persists through time. It is a myth that gender inequality only exists in not develop countries. People have a tendency to think that only poor countries suffer this kind of situations, but gender inequality is a global problem. In countries such as Canada and United States and many other…

    • 124 Words
    • 1 Pages
    Decent Essays
  • Superior Essays

    In “Lean in: What Would You Do If You Weren’t Afraid?” by Sheryl Sandberg the main topic is feminism based upon her point of view and research. Throughout her work she states the general struggles that come from being a woman in the world. In her work she does not seem very one sided on how to change what women are going through now but instead just saying what women do now that doesn’t work now a day. Before this Sandberg wrote “lean in” there had never been a feminist work on the New York Times Best Sellers list which was a big movement in feminist teaching, but was it good publicity for long time feminist?…

    • 1210 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Superior Essays
  • Great Essays

    “Traditional gender roles cast men as rational, strong, protective, and decisive; they castwomen as emotional (irrational), weak, nurturing, and submissive. These gender roles havebeen used very successfully to justify inequities, which still occur today, such as excludingwomen from equal access to leadership and decision-making positions (in the family as well asin politics, academia, and the corporate world), paying men higher wages than women fordoing the same job (if women are even able to obtain the job), and convincing women that they are not fit for careers in such areas as mathematics and engineering,”( Tyson 85).Views on gender-based differentiation in the workplace and ininterpersonal relationshipshaveoften undergone profound changes…

    • 773 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Great Essays
  • Improved Essays

    Women And Equality In The Workplace Gender Equality is the most common issue which has come across at the workplace in which women are treated inferior than the other men employees. It has been noticed than women are being paid less than men, and there is a male-dominant crowd in the workplaces. For no reason women are set apart when they are equally intelligent as men. It is very casual that women are also capable of doing a particular job as men. Gender discrimination in workplaces are fallacious assumptions and must be stopped because women are just as productive as a male employee is in doing an allotted task.…

    • 853 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Improved Essays