Toronto           This must be a painful report to issue for Leanin, the organization begun by former Facebook executive Sheryl Sanberg.  A 10-year study begun in 2015 that looked at 1000 companies and how they handled moving women from entry levels forward found a dispiriting lack of progress.

The study by McKinsey and Leanin.Org, as reported by the Wall Street Journal, found that “The share of women in the lowest – and much larger – managerial ranks has grown by just 2 percentage points from a decade ago, to 39% from 37%, and slightly more among middle managers…”  Furthermore, “most C-suite promotions put women in positions, like human resources and marketing, that don’t lead to the CEO job.”

This is especially troubling because this same decade saw the #MeToo movement that re-evaluated the treatment of women at work and in general.  This period also saw increasing commitments by corporations claiming to increase diversity, including by gender.  These efforts are now being backtracked under political attack in some quarters and legal attack in others, from the courts on down.  Furthermore, even with women at the top in the CEO job, that doesn’t seem to be moving the needle.

It is hard not to conclude that “leaning in,” rather than being a successful strategy or tactic for women’s advancement, must be judged a failure.  Sadly, none of this is a surprise.  There is a fallacy at the heart of the “lean in” argument, which is the belief that women’s advancement is not based on forcing corporate and societal change, but instead is simply a matter of women being more aggressive at asserting their self-interest.   The whole argument was sort of a version of neoliberalism applied to gender.  The fact that it turns out that corporations can easily handle the individual pleas of their women employees and executives and dismiss their voice as so much sound in the wind is unfortunate, but predictable.  It is hard to believe that without concerted mass demands for women that change will come at the corporate level.

The study also found that, “The number of employers who said gender diversity was a high priority fell from 78% this year from 87% in 2019,” not that they meant it anyway, as results indicated.  “Gender-focused recruiting initiatives fell by nearly a third from 2022.”  Let’s face it, these are tough times for women.

Misogynists are running for political office and are in the courts at the highest level.  Affirmative action programs are being eviscerated in one sphere after another.  A woman at the top in the White House might make some difference, but without a mass movement targeting companies, change is not going to come.