As soon as the face of company feminism, departing Meta COO Sheryl Sandberg will depart underneath a cloud, having performed nothing to assist the reason for ladies at work whereas her firm has brought on hurt to teen women.
Britta Pedersen/image alliance through Getty Pictures
For all her accomplishments, few issues have clearly mattered extra to Sheryl Sandberg than being the voice of recent American feminism.
Now we all know: Sandberg, who's stepping down as COO of Meta after 14 years, is little greater than one other Silicon Valley monster, monetizing her private story whereas exploiting everybody and all the pieces she will be able to. Feminist management was simply Sandberg’s Malicious program. It nonetheless is.
In July, Meta gave Nebraska police entry to personal Fb communications between a 17-year-old lady and her mom. The lady was 23 weeks pregnant and planning an abortion, which has been unlawful within the state after 20 weeks since 2010.
The prosecutor within the case mentioned that is the primary felony cost of its type there, as Roe — overturned in June — didn’t permit for states to legally implement their very own bans till 24 weeks. Nebraska’s prosecutor charged the lady’s mom with a felony after studying her Fb exchanges together with her daughter.
This from an organization that stresses how a lot they worth person privateness. An organization that’s vowed to cowl journey bills for any worker needing abortion entry.
Not that Sandberg has something to say about this newest hypocrisy — aside from a Fb put up shortly after Roe was overturned, calling the choice “an enormous setback. For ourselves, our daughters, and each era that follows, we should sustain the struggle. Collectively, we should defend and develop abortion entry.”
Simply one other sentiment with out backup. It’s very on-brand for Sandberg, who doesn’t point out the myriad scandals she’s going through in her resignation announcement. Nope, wouldn’t you understand: She’s doing it for the sisterhood.
“I'm not solely certain what the longer term will carry,” Sandberg posted on Fb in June. “However I do know it is going to embrace focusing extra on my basis and philanthropic work, which is extra essential to me than ever given how important this second is for girls.”
Says the facility dealer who reportedly tried to spike, on two separate events, a narrative the Each day Mail had about her then-boyfriend, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, getting a brief restraining order taken out towards him by a former girlfriend in 2014. Sandberg reportedly threatened the Mail’s future working relationship with Fb.
The corporate denied any such interference: “Sheryl Sandberg,” mentioned Fb, “by no means threatened the MailOnline’s enterprise relationship with Fb with a purpose to affect an editorial choice.”
Then there’s her 2013 bestseller “Lean In: Girls, Work, and the Will to Lead,” which spoke to a really skinny slice of girls: particularly, already profitable and moneyed. From Oprah to Katie Couric to elite school campuses, Sandberg — who someway couldn’t decide to calling her e-book a “feminist manifesto” — argued that ladies ourselves are responsible for profession stagnation.
Not pre-COVID company buildings, not the calls for of motherhood or gender disparities or pay gaps or the dearth of assist at residence (single moms, by the way in which, had been ignored by Sandberg). Not the ladies who don’t have nannies or housekeepers or billions within the financial institution and personal jets at their disposal, as Sandberg does — no, it’s our personal fault. Simply be extra like Sheryl!
The retrograde recommendation Sandberg supplied in “Lean In” — which had a co-author who, I assure, did all of the heavy lifting — included such gems as be “relentlessly nice” and “‘appropriately’ feminine,” no matter which means.
As Michelle Obama mentioned in 2018, “It’s not at all times sufficient to lean in, as a result of that s–t doesn’t work on a regular basis.”
Sure!
It wasn’t till Sandberg confronted her personal tragedy, the sudden loss of life of husband Dave Goldberg in 2015 — one she changed into one other co-authored bestseller, “Possibility B: Dealing with Adversity, Constructing Resilience, and Discovering Pleasure” — that she admitted taking her privilege as a right.
“I didn't actually get how laborious it's to succeed at work,” she mentioned, “if you end up overwhelmed at residence.”
In a contemporaneous Time journal cowl story, Sandberg additionally raved about our evil overlord Mark Zuckerberg. “Mark’s one of many individuals who actually carried me,” Sandberg mentioned. “I consider much more I work with the best individual on the earth.”
That was then. Now, as Sandberg faces a deposition over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and is underneath inner investigation for utilizing firm sources to subsidize her e-book, her latest marriage ceremony and her basis, in addition to utilizing Fb underlings for private duties — nicely, Sheryl Sandberg is not a value-add.
She can also be not inheritor obvious to Gloria Steinem. Because the Wall Road Journal reported final September, nothing was performed even after an inner investigation discovered that teenage women particularly had been harmed by what they see on Instagram (which is owned by Fb) — an dependancy the corporate fosters as Large Tobacco does.
Nonetheless right now, Sandberg says nothing. Need to guess she nonetheless retains her personal kids off social media, as most Silicon Valley execs do — whilst we now know that her firm has been focusing on kids? That’s proper: No Fb, no Instagram for her children, she mentioned.
So goodbye and good riddance to Sheryl Sandberg, who didn't lean in when it mattered most. Girls and women are higher off with out you.
mcallahan@nypost.com
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