Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
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THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET What Women Really Want by MARGARET DICKSON I have no idea whether she intended to or not, but Facebook's Chief Operating abandoned the fields they had worked so hard to enter after having a second child Officer Sheryl Sandberg has fired the opening shot in the next chapter of America's because mothering and working at the same time was "just too hard." ongoing "mommy wars." I get that. Sandberg has just published her book entitled Lean In: Women, Work, and the As a mother of three who worked throughout their childhoods and school years, Will to Lead. Readers, including book reviewers and television I am not immune to difficult, heart-wrenching, guilt-inducing talking heads, love it or hate it but I have yet to find anyone who and relentless family situations facing working mothers. They is neutral on it. That is surely because Sandberg has put into print are the everyday fodder of working mothers, and they are what some women have talked about almost in whispers and some hardly confined to mothers working in the stratosphere of their have thought but kept to themselves. Sandberg's scary premise is fields. A mother working a factory shift faces them as well, that when we women are bumping up the threshold of success, the perhaps even more profoundly. glass ceiling, or our date with destiny, we sabotage ourselves. Why does all this angst, Sandberg's, mine and that of In Sandberg speak, we "lean out." countless others, make any difference? Why does it matter that Sheryl Sandberg is no ordinary woman. highly capable women are not becoming the leaders, or as former She is a graduate of Harvard College and was among the top President Bush might say, the "deciders" in their chosen fields? students in her class at Harvard Business School. Her boss, Why should you and I care that a dentist, a doctor, a Harvard Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, is a Harvard man as is her Business School grad abandons her career for whatever reason? husband, a tech company CEO with whom she has two young To me, it matters for the same reasons it mattered when I was Sheryl Sandberg children. At 42, Sandberg is ranked among Fortune magazine's working in a family business and was often the only woman at the 50 most powerful women and Time's 100 Most Influential People table with bankers, lawyers and my colleagues. It matters for the in the World. She is said to be worth something in the neighborhood of $550 million. same reason it mattered when I served in a state legislature long dominated by men in Sandberg is not writing about ordinary women, either. which women still serve in numbers far below our 51+ percent of the population. She is writing about women who through their own intelligence, educational Women's voices are no better or worse, more or less important or informed, wiser preparation, knowledge of their fields, skills including people skills, hard work and or weightier than men's voices. sheer pluck find themselves at the top of the line to real leadership positions that affect They are just different. the lives of multitudes of people they will never know and making decisions that can Women and men bring different life experiences and perspectives to the actually change aspects of American life. decision-making table. Some of those accomplished women on the brink of real and powerful leadership Our upbringings, our adolescences and formative years, our careers, our back off, often for family reasons. biological roles as mothers and fathers and countless other aspects of our lives I have not expressed these concerns nearly as well as Sandberg nor have I written a are different but complimentary. book about them, but I certainly have them. Sheryl Sandberg and I are on the same page in wanting women's voices at the When I was in college, significant numbers of women were just beginning to go into rarefied, if rarely seen, tables where decisions are made that chart our nation's what had been thought of as professions for men. Several of my friends and thousands course in the myriad fields that shape our lives in ways we can never know. of other young American women chose medicine, law and accounting over nursing Sandberg asks the questions, "What is holding women back once the and teaching. In the decades since, those numbers have only grown, with more women leadership role we said we wanted is within our grasp?" "With millions of highly than men now in college and in many graduate and professional programs. educated, well trained and seemingly fearless American women What worries me and clearly worries Sheryl Sandberg is that many of today's highly poised to lead, why are so few in top leadership positions?" educated, highly motivated, and-smart-as-all-get out women hold themselves back These are important questions and MARGARET DICKSON, Conin their careers in all sorts of ways, and some actually leave the workplace altogether. Sandberg is brave to pose them. tributing Writer, COMMENTS? I know of two young professional women, one physician and one dentist, who Editor@upandcomingweekly.com. Daily Specials Breakfast Lunch Dinner Fresh Seafood Hand Cut Steaks Homemade Desserts Italian & Greek Children's Menu 1304 Morganton Rd. 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