Learnings from Sheryl Sandberg

After having watched a series of the Ramayana epic series along with the grandchildren, had the grandparent instruct the little boy to show his skills in archery like Lord Rama. The display begins and the victim was the older girl. The girl oblivious of the entire demonstration being a pleasing gimmick instantly starts wailing. While the rest of the audience continued to praise the little boy playfully, the girl is comforted by the mother, and attention diverted to the soft toys and dolls, while the others continue their banter. Thoughts race….apart from the violence imbibed in the child in the process of watching an Epic series, these are playful moments that leave an indelible mark in the mind of the girl child and later on manifests in different ways. While girls are encouraged to read and excel academically, the Indian family tends to curb the ambition of girls as and when it comes to aligning with the social norms of marriage and childbirth and thereafter. With the marriage of a young lady, dovetails a separate sense of responsibility, which the girl is expected to shift her attention to, and hence career responsibilities are given second priority. With nuclear families growing in presence, many working mothers choose to support their working daughters and are found to volunteer to take on the responsibility of caring and nurturing the grandchild. However, that does not boost the ambition of the women and hence cannot be cited to be the reason for the ambition gap. At the home front, when crisis surfaces, it is the woman who is expected to forego her ambitions unless and until she learns to place her priorities right. Girls are groomed gradually to prioritise their responsibilities so much so it leaves them aspiring for very little from their careers. If nothing works then fear certainly works. So culture and social norms apart from religion and biological differences are brought up at different junctures to build fear in the woman. Hence, by the time the woman has put in the number of years of experience to qualify for a certain position in education, fear seeps into the psyche when it comes to the other responsibilities back home that need priority.

Sheryl Sandberg writes in her book, Lean In, “the blunt truth is that men still run the world….This means that when it comes to making the decisions that most affect our world, women’s voices are not heard equally.” So true when it comes to the education domain where women are revered and hired right from childcare to early education to teaching to governance up to the pre-university levels and then there is an abrupt shift in the hiring process. Preference for women candidates for higher education administrative roles slides downwards with reasons that are not so convincing. What are the reasons for the change and sudden shift when women are trained and educated and skilled like the men are the big questions? While the K-12 sector has women empowered to run a chain of schools and also research shows how successful they are in this sector; when it comes to higher education, the curve dips sharply. The percentage of women leaders in academic governance is lower as compared to men in the Education sector. Ask a fresher from PG if she would opt for the position of an Assistant Professor or a leadership role, a quick retort would be a ‘no’ to a leadership role. Does that mean that women are not capable of thinking higher or their decision-making skills dip as they handle adolescents? Certainly not! Is this a mirror image of the relegation of roles to women as the children grow into adolescents at the home front? That is a point to be thought over….Over a period of years, the myth that a boy’s education has to take precedence over that of a girl has fast disintegrated in India. Performance charts show that girls have been outperforming boys in academics in India and the century-old myth of girls not being as academically inclined as boys in India has faded faster. However, what remains constant is the fact that men are still considered better suited to be bosses than women when it comes to the Education sector. Sandberg writes, “There are so many reasons for this winnowing out, but one important contributor is a leadership ambition gap.” (Sandberg, 15)

With responsibility comes fear, the fear of governing this sector in education which has more than 50%, male colleagues. Barring aside the lobbying that goes in the male circles and the woman being jibed at the workplace. The barriers as listed by Sandberg need another layer of topping, as the fear of being ‘preferred over the other’ and also the fear that ‘the male colleagues or the Board would not prefer a woman boss’ is to be added. She writes further, “Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.” (Sandberg, 24)

Skilled in running the home front, right from the finances to the daily chores, monitoring, quality control, timelines, decentralization, and above all the innate quality of patience and empathy, makes the woman a threat to her male counterparts. In India, the attire also dictates the power of the woman. A woman who wears a suit and attends office is considered ‘bossy’ while the woman who is clad in a sari is considered to be the perfect epitome of a teacher, a mother but certainly not accepted as a boss. Sandberg refers to Professor Gruenfeld, a professor of leadership at Stanford as she quotes him, “Our entrenched cultural ideas associate men with leadership qualities and women with nurturing qualities and put women in a double bind,” (Sandberg, 43) Professors who have attained experience after years of teaching and research choose not to bring in a difference to the world of education for fear of political bias, bureaucracy, for having to sit on a table and answer the Board who are all men and for reasons as menial as visiting government offices. This stereotypical image of the woman is endorsed by the male teaching fraternity who list the essential qualities for you to be a leader is: powerful, decisive and bossy..all of which do not match with the nurturing qualities that have been ingrained in the woman right from childhood. If a woman is competent and efficient at work or at home, she is considered to be ‘not nice’, and that becomes her biggest hurdle for progress. While many women attempt to defy this stereotypical feminine image of a woman, they are judged else wise and a negative impression built of her. But the point is that it is not her ‘inability’ but the stereotyped image of her which dissuades her from achieving what she is capable of achieving.

What is essential is that women cannot ever self-doubt themselves, downplay achievements, learn to negotiate, withstand criticism, stop being pleasant and pleasing and expand their opportunities to grow. Ignoring all differences, there needs to be the belief that we are equal. Growing unprofessional, blaming others, demeaning other women, or engaging in crusades against the other sex may not be the answer to the challenges faced.