WOMEN TAKNG THE LEAD

Sheryl Sandberg, with Nell Scovell, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead (New York: Knopf, 2013) ("Less than six months after I started at Facebook, Mark and I sat down for my first formal review. One of the things he told me was that my desire to be liked by everyone would hold me back. He said that when you want to change things, you can't please everyone. If you do please everyone, you aren't making enough progress, Mark was right." Id. at 51. "Other research suggests that once a woman achieves success, particularly in a gender-biased context, her capacity to see gender discrimination is reduced." "It's heartbreaking to think about one woman holding another back. As former secretary of state Madeleine Albright once said, 'There's a special place in hell for women who don't help other women.' And the consequences extend beyond individual pain. Women's negative views of female coworkers are often seen as an objective assessment--more credible than the views of men. When women voice gender bias, they legitimize it. Obviously, a negative attitude cannot be gender based if it comes from another woman, right? Wrong. Often without realizing it, women internalize disparaging cultural attitudes and then echo them back. As a result, women are not just victims of sexism, they can also be perpetrators." Id. at 163-164.).