Turns Out Leaning In Is Awfully Difficult When You Are Nursing A Broken Ankle

Some years ago, before she was better known as an unprincipled stooge for an evil company, Sheryl Sandberg was famed for writing a book. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. Anyway, in this book, Lean In, she argued that, notwithstanding systemic gender bias, etc., women had only themselves to blame for their failure to be at the vanguard of capitalism: They undermine themselves, fail to leave it all on the field, and so on. At least, this is my understanding of her thesis: As I am a man who is not climbing any corporate ladder, and one with an aversion to literature that can be boiled down into one of those motivational posters of someone climbing a mountain or whatever, I did not read it, but pithy, uncharitable Cliff’s Notes for books you’ll never pick up but wish to discuss/be uncharitable towards yourself is what the internet is for.

Anyway, about that systemic gender bias: Seems there might be something to it, something that working 18-hour days might not exactly make up for.

Men and women enter the workplace in nearly equal numbers. Then, something happens: At the time of a first promotion, more men get elevated than women, data show, creating a gender imbalance that persists at every level of work thereafter.

Sheryl Sandberg says it amounts to a “broken rung” on the corporate career ladder…. The Facebook chief operating officer and “Lean In” author noted that inequities in the workplace stemmed, in part, from decisions made in that earliest promotion process.

“There’s no such thing as a magic ticket to equality in top jobs,” Ms. Sandberg said. “But this is about as close as it gets.”