Words of strength

Name of the book : Lean In

Author : Sheryl Sandberg and Nell Scovell

Year : 2013

Publisher : Alfred A. Knopf

Genre : Biography

Grab a copy of Lean In now!

Summary : Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's Chief Operating Officer and one of its Board of Directors tells us why the housewife struggles to make a decision between climbing the professional ladder and family life.


"An empowering book of solutions"

This book, as the title suggests, is an effort to encourage women to lean in on their passions, their professional aspirations and desires. Sheryl Sandberg, a top executive at Facebook, talks about her insecurities and lack of confidence from her Harvard days and how she overcame those hurdles and eventually won a place on the Forbes' Most Influential People in the world, surpassing the then first lady Michelle Obama.

The women of today still shudder at the thought of pursuing their desires, which is exactly what Lean In talks about. The current generation still suppresses women from thinking and creating freely without fear. It instills fear of being rejected and shamed by the society for not being a 'good stay-at-home mom with kids', which eventually dampens her spirit and drags her back home.
They often hesitate to make their voice heard and appreciated, while Lean In motivates them to fearlessly bring their opinions and thoughts to the table and excel.

This book inspires women to dream and achieve beyond the four walls and break the glass ceiling like Sandberg did. The book also mentions how perception of a colleagues's success can be greatly influenced by gender, through the Heidi Roizen experiment.



"Motivating and inspiring"

The book brims with motivation and inspiration to push women forward up the professional ladder and bring the brightest minds forward. Sandberg also addresses the issue of gender bias with the apt example of Riley, a then four-year-old feminists around the world adore. She says that children, the future, are influenced early on with colour-coded toys and products. A particular product of a kids clothing line, captioned its T-shirts with an atrocious message - "Smart like Daddy" on a blue T-shirt for boys and "Pretty like Mommy" on a pink T-shirt for girls.

The book even explains the contagious disease many women have - Impostor Syndrome - that often paralyses women from expressing their thoughts and ideas. Sandberg narrates certain meetings she had with outrageous female applicants over the years, who refused advancement in their careers and some even quit their job in their early twenties - with most citing appalling reasons like balancing family life and raising children, much before their marriage, which often dooms their career and growth even before it commences. More often than not, truly talented women in the workforce stagnate their potentially successful careers this way. It also explains why women often chase away potential mentors and sponsors and if they do get one, they often fail to recognize and utilise them effectively.

This book also discusses the oft-repeated issue of spouses not willing to share half of the load while women end up quitting their jobs to tend to the household chores. Sandberg herself once a young divorcee, stresses on the importance of choosing a partner willing to share a part of household chores and childcare. She explains how a faulty decision in choosing one's partner can land a heavy blow on your professional as well as personal life, having suffered from it herself. Her book motivates women to carefully and confidently make the important choices in their lives, like she made the move and married her equal partner Dave Goldberg 10 years after her divorce in 1993.

Overall, this book is a pack of motivation, inspiration and problems with their solutions. This book is a must read for every working woman and her husband, son, father or brother.


Let me put it in her way - "An ideal society would be where men run half of the house and women rule half of the country.