Women Troubles
Should leaving the kids behind be the goal?

Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg


Mona Charen


In her TED talk three years ago, and now in a book that has received lavish attention, Sandberg laments that women “are not making it to the top of any profession anywhere in the world. The numbers tell the story . . . 190 heads of state — nine are women. Of all the people in parliaments in the world, 13 percent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top . . . 15, 16 percent.”

Sandberg appears not to be complaining about sexism so much as encouraging women to stop sabotaging their own success. “Studies show,” she reports, that women are less likely to attribute their success to their own merit than are men. They are less likely to ask for raises or to negotiate for better terms in a job search. When they are successful, they are less likely than comparable males to be considered “likable.”

Those statistics ring true to me, as I’ve noticed both from personal experience and from studies that women tend to judge themselves more harshly than do men on other matters too. Women, for example, are less likely than men to consider themselves good-looking. If Sandberg wants to agitate to help women think better of themselves and get the raises that are due to them, good for her.




Leaving the kid appears to be the goal. But why? “I think a world that was run where half our countries and half our companies were run by women, would be a better world.”


Isn’t it odd that people who exhort us to increase the number of women in powerful, high-paying jobs, on the speculative grounds that this will be good for the world, discount the roles of women as mothers, which are (usually) of undeniable benefit to their kids? Many women have figured this out. One put it this way: “The world will not be affected one way or another if it has one more accountant during the next decade. But my kids will be profoundly affected by having me raise them.”

Many women also find that devoting their time to raising happy, ethical, and responsible children is more rewarding than spending 60 hours a week at the office. Why should they be made to feel that they are letting down the team?

“I hope that . . . you have the ambition to run the world,” Sandberg told Barnard graduates, “because this world needs you to run it.” But the world can wait. Kids can’t.
