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Sheryl Sandberg isn’t the perfect feminist. So what?

By Jessica Valenti,March 01, 2013

Jessica Valenti is the author of four books on feminism and a contributing editor at the Nation.

Sheryl Sandberg’s “Lean In” — a book advising women to embrace ambition — hasn’t been released to the public yet, and already a backlash is brewing.

Sandberg has been called out of touch, her book a “vanity project.” She’s been slammed as being too interested in building her brand and for advising women on work and family issues while having the temerity to employ a nanny.

What’s remarkable about these criticisms is that they’re not coming from the usual right-wing anti-feminists, but from feminists themselves.

[Make Your Case: Is Sheryl Sandberg good for feminism?]

The feminist backlash against Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer and a former vice president at Google, reveals a big and recurring problem within the movement: We hold leaders to impossible standards, placing perfection over progress. And a movement that does more complaining than creating is bound to fail.

There are certainly substantive critiques to be made about Sandberg’s book. “Lean In” is mostly tailored for married women with children and may not resonate with women who aren’t upper-middle-class or elite, something Sandberg acknowledges up front: “The vast majority of women are not looking to lead in the workplace, but are struggling to make ends meet and take care of their families.”

Critics have also knocked Sandberg for putting the onus on women to lift themselves up, rather than blaming society for being sexist. But in her book, she frequently identifies how internal and external forces keep women from advancing in their careers. She also supports structural change, citing economic inequalities, discrimination, and the lack of paid maternity leave and affordable child care as problems that need to be addressed.

And yet, swift and biting attacks have become the default for feminist discourse, so much so that writers at Forbes, at the New Republic and in The Washington Post didn’t even read “Lean In” before writing about its presumed flaws. (Yes, Sandberg’s TED Talkthat inspired the book has been widely watched and publicized, but eagerness to get shots in shouldn’t be more important than doing your homework.)

In this kind of culture, the snarkiest takedown wins. New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd has called Sandberg a “PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots.” In USA Today, Joanne Bamberger wrote that Sandberg wants women to “pull themselves up by the Louboutin straps.” (Sandberg does not discuss fashion or her shoe choices in the book.) Sandberg’s foray into workplace inequities has been framed as a catfight between herself and Anne-Marie Slaughter, of the blockbuster Atlantic article “Why Women Can’t Have It All.” Melissa Gira Granteven implied in The Post that Sandberg wrote “Lean In” because of sheer selfishness: “She had it all — a husband, children, a beautiful home, a seat on the board of a billion-dollar company, a nine-figure net worth of her own. But there was one thing Sheryl Sandberg didn’t have.” Because if there’s anything wealthy women are desperate for, it’s the chance to lead a social movement.

The detractors underestimate how radical Sandberg’s messages are for a mainstream audience. When was the last time you heard someone with a platform as big as hers argue that women should insist that their partners do an equal share of domestic work and child care?

The view that Sandberg is too rich and powerful to advise working women is shortsighted; it assumes that any sort of success is antithetical to feminism. The truth is, feminism could use a powerful ally. Here’s a nationally known woman calling herself a feminist, writing what will be a wildly popular book with feminist ideas, encouraging other women to be feminists. And we’re worried she has too much influence? That she’s too . . . ambitious?

The cutting down of feminist leaders is nothing new. Writer and activist Jo Freeman said in a 1976 Ms. magazine piece that “trashing” within the feminist movement had become a toxic, yet accepted, form of policing other feminists — especially those perceived as successful.

“To do something significant, to be recognized, to achieve, is to imply that one is ‘making it off other women’s oppression’ or that one thinks oneself better than other women. . . . The quest for ‘leaderlessness’ that the Movement so prizes has more frequently become an attempt to tear down those women who show leadership qualities, than to develop such qualities in those who don’t.”