Leaning Back
I'm not sure that there's a single industry that makes being a woman in business easy. "Me Too" moments aside, women are challenged before they even begin, being faced with unfair archetypes that fuel stigmas that stick. In the agency world and beyond, I've heard women be labeled as the classically offensive and misogynistic "aggressive," "abrasive," "arrogant," "bitchy," "catty," and "emotional."
Annoying, sure, but being dubbed any of the above never irked me as much as one phrase has as of late.
Lean in.
Striking a healthy work-life balance is challenging enough, regardless of gender. Combine that with the responsibilities of being a working mother, and you've just conjured up a harsh reality.
When I heard the phrase "lean in" before my son was born, I found it patronizing and tone deaf at best. Women are constantly reminded of how they're viewed as less-than, despite the facts and stats that show how hard we already inherently work, and, broadly speaking, how well educated and credentialed we continue to be.
As a new mom who found maternity leave to be more isolating and defeating than rewarding and special, returning to work was even harder. You relinquish so much control when you take a leave of absence, and considering the lack of standardized paid leave in the US, returning to work is -- for many, myself included -- a pressing need to stay afloat.
I was lucky. I returned to work and was met by people eager for the return of my expertise, at an organization that values the lives its team members have built outside the office. But I'm the exception to the rule, and that's not OK.
Parent or not (and allow me to go so far as to say pet parents count, too!) when women in business are already damned from the get-go, I suggest we lean back and place more responsibility on the organizations we serve, than lean in when we're already designed to do so.
Leaning back doesn't mean staying silent, but it also doesn't mean that we should have the weight of deep-rooted gender bias (conscious or not) on our shoulders. We were born into it, and the world around us -- in this case the work-world -- enabled it.
I know, I know. It's all easier said than done, and it's a deeply flawed system. But while people (men and women!) work to recalibrate the work-world, I suggest we all think twice before we communicate expectations with the directive of "leaning in."
To be fair, I realize that this isn't linear. A text exchange with a friend and industry colleague proved that. It's hard to ignore the movement of empowerment that Sheryl Sandberg has drummed up, and that often times the phrase is used with harmless intentions.
So, I'm curious: what's your take?
