Features

04 The New Face of Feminism? Sherryl Sandberg speaks out. 08 Warren buffet’s Office Hours Ask a question.

10 Go for the crazy idea

Quit your job.

BusINess

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techNology

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art3060 Editor: Qian Chen

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Modern Women Vol. 1 Issue. 3

FROM THE EDITOR

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Maecenas mollis ligula quis est posuere dapibus. Quisque dictum sceler isque velit sed fermentum. Suspendissers pulvinar, dui at luctus iaculis, ligula elitivit adipiscing diam, et vestibulum leo augue vel dui. Maecenas est nibh, feugiat et imperdiet eu, ullamcorper non orci. Curabitur posuere mattis pellentesque. Class aptent taciti sociosqu ad litora torquent per conubia nostra, per inceptos himenaeos. Vivamus posuere iaculis lacus, eu fermentum magna placerat in. Nulla malesuada augue quis erat porttitor in biben-dum leo porta. Duis ultricies tellus a tellus adipiscing tristique. Sed rutrum magna vel risus rhoncus et volutpat purus placerat. Mauris euismod rhoncus pculis lacus, eu fermentum magna plac-erat in norta ipsum amet sadip nemis uns dolo.

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Nulla facilisi. Vestibulum justo tortor, mollis et luctus in, vehicula nec sapien. Aliquam ullamcorper velit non odio pulvinar nec hendrerit dolor placerat. Vivamus ut tellus dolor, sit amet plac-erat mi. Donec Mauris nisi sapien, sollicitudin eu pharetra quis, consectetur in orci.

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Modern Women Vol. 1 Issue. 3

ven Sheryl Sandberg seems slightly

surprised by the furore she has

caused. “You know, this is a hard-

cover book of feminism,” she laughs.

“So I think what the natural thing

for people to have done … is to com-

pletely ignore it.”

But the reaction has been quite the

opposite - and not just because Sandberg,

as Facebook’s number two, is one of the

most powerful women in business.

Already published in 24 languages and

counting, her book Lean In has shot – and

has stuck - to the top of the US bestseller

lists, and has been climbing here since its

release last month.

What it represents is Sandberg’s explo-

sive call to action, for women to stop

holding themselves back and to “lean in”

to their careers, warning that “we lower

our own expectations of what we can

achieve” and so hobble our own progress.

Met with loud praise in some quarters,

she has also faced harsh criticism, from

those complaining she lets companies

and governments off the hook over rigid

work schedules and expensive childcare,

to others who say she ignores the sheer

gruelling toll of trying to combine a full-

throttle career and a family.

Sandberg, however, seems entirely at

ease as she comes smiling into the

Covent Garden hotel suite where she is

on a one-woman publicity blitz, glamor-

ous in a boardroom-acceptable way.

Hours after Baroness Thatcher’s funer-

al, she bats back the perennial question

of whether Britain’s first women prime

minister was friend or foe to women.

“I think we have to be grateful for the

women that came before us - and then

we have to build on their legacy to do

even more,” she says promptly. “So take

my own example, I say I leave [work] at

five thirty. I’m not sure the women that

came before me in Silicon Valley could

have done that. I don’t know if they could

have survived. I say I cry at work” – wryly

THE nEw FacE OF FEMInIsM?

E

Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg speaks out.

– “I’m not sure Baroness Thatcher could

have done that.”

Ah, that crying. On Mark Zuckerberg,

the wunderkind founder of Facebook, no

less, over a “not just false, but cruel” story

circling about her. That, along with vari-

ous other revelations – how she noticed

her daughter had nits while on the eBay

corporate jet, breast-pumping while on

conference calls in her Google office –

have certainly helped to create a buzz

around the book. But if her personal tales

have drawn people in, it is her argument

that is causing debate.

“I think the clashes are coming from

the fact that as women we are never

quite comfortable,” says Sandberg. “I

don’t know any women that are totally

comfortable with their choices, myself

included, and I try to be super honest

about that in the book. I feel guilty and I

worry, I worry about work, I worry about”-

a quick change of direction - “I know very

few men who don’t feel comfortable with

their choices.”

To her critics, she has a pithy response:

read the book.

“It’s incredibly clear that I’m not put-

ting all the onus on women, that I have a

lot in there on how men need to be bet-

ter managers of women, how men need

to acknowledge bias - how all of us need

I think we have to be grateful for the women that came before us and then we have to build their legacy to do even more.

6 7

Modern Women Vol. 1 Issue. 3

to stop telling little girls they’re bossy,”

she says, firing back answers from an

armchair. “I try to be really honest about

my own struggles, my own” – a pause

– “heated discussions with my husband

that got us to equality.”

That said, you cannot just wait for the

institutional barriers to disappear, is the

reasoning from Sandberg, who describes

herself as a pragmatist as well as a

feminist. And so she is full of possible

solutions, open about hiring a nanny and

how she and her husband will sit down at

the start of every week to divide school

run duties.

Women, she also advises in the book,

should “combine niceness with insis-

tence” as they negotiate for pay rises and

promotions – a tactic I wonder if I am

seeing made flesh.

“I wasn’t anticipating this level of

dialogue - but I’m so grateful for it?” -

with an upwards inflexion, getting me to

agree - “because I think it’s going to take

heated debate to get away from what

I was most worried about writing the

book: stagnation.”

Not a word you’d ever associate with

Sandberg, who talks at a breakneck pace

with an arsenal of statistics – “women

get paid 15pc less than men in this coun-

try, women get paid 23pc less than men

in my country” – at her disposal.

Now 43, she seems always to have

been heading for big things, with her sib-

lings joking in their speeches at her wed-

ding to David Goldberg, a tech entrepre-

neur, that they were her “first employees”.

Growing up in Miami with parents

committed to public service – her father

a doctor, her mother a tireless volunteer

– working towards social change was

perhaps in her DNA. But after Harvard

and business school propelled her to the

US Treasury, she jumped into the technol-

ogy boom.

After joining a then tiny Google –

which turned out to be a “rocket ship” -

she agreed to become Zuckerberg’s chief

operating officer at Facebook in 2008,

last year shepherding the company’s

$100 billion-plus float on Wall Street.

Along the way, she was navigating

married life and the births of her son

and daughter, now eight and five. The

book grew out of talks she had in recent

years started giving to students and then

online, drawing on her experiences, but it

was a work contact who cornered her in

a bathroom and told her, “You are waiting

for someone else to do this.” That was the

impetus to write.

Yes, Zuckerberg has read the book,

Sandberg says, and has been “incredibly

supportive”, even if, after five years sitting

next to her, he said he had already heard

her tell every story.

Still, in public she seems more at ease

with sticking to the general. Her first

opening chapter, she admits, boasted four

pages on the Masai tribe and another five

on matrilineal societies.

“I thought it was fabulous,” she laughs.

“No one else thought it was any good

at all! My husband called it eating your

Wheaties. I don’t know if that translates

here, but it was a cereal people were

supposed to eat because it was good for

them that people didn’t like.” Sandberg,

it is clear, knows the value of a spoonful

of sugar.

If there is one charge she may struggle

to refute, it is that she is far from an

everywoman, with her book laying bare

the drive and discipline behind her stel-

lar career.

Yes, she may, famously, leave the office

at five thirty for family time, but that was

after years of 12-hour days as a minimum

– and she will start work again at home

later that evening.

Downtime, unsurprisingly, sounds in

short supply. She’s started watching

Downton Abbey (still on series one) and

No one else thought it was any good at all! My husband called it eating your Wheaties. I don’t know if that translates here, but it was a cereal people were supposed to eat because it was good for them.

has a tight group of girlfriends, who stay

in touch through social networking.

Life, she says, is “mostly family and

work but I try to go away with my girl-

friends once a year. We have a Facebook

group so we can daily post [messages] to

each other and that’s been great.”

Meanwhile, she’s thinking big. The book

is just the start of a movement – a “com-

munity”, she corrects – of Lean In circles,

backed by her new non-profit foundation

of the same name. Think book clubs with

career development on the agenda.

No wonder, then, that some are already

wondering if politics will be next.

“No. Full stop, no,” says Sandberg, who

cannot really say anything else, given the

repercussions on her current role. But I’m

not so sure, remembering how, seated on

a panel of luminaries at the last Davos

gathering, it was Sandberg, not Christine

Lagarde, the feted IMF chief, nor any of

the other heavyweights onstage, who

made the crowd sit up and listen.

Sandberg on the campaign trail? I

wouldn’t bet against it.