Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Sandberg opens with an anecdote about being pregnant with her first child while working at Google. She had a difficult pregnancy, which made walking all the way across a parking lot difficult. After her husband, Dave, told her that other companies had designated parking spots for expectant mothers, Sandberg confronted her employer about the issue and won, which potentially benefited many other pregnant women as well.

From here, Sandberg begins to outline the state of gender equality in the contemporary United States, noting that American women have made substantial progress since first entering the workforce, and that they have much to be "grateful" for in comparison to women living in many regions of the world (5). Nevertheless, she says, "The blunt truth is that men still run the world": men hold the overwhelming majority of senior positions in both government and private industry, and women of color are particularly underrepresented (5). Furthermore, the average woman continues to earn only about $.77 for every dollar a man earns. Sandberg says she has witnessed this inequality firsthand over the course of her career and therefore concludes that the "[feminist] revolution has stalled" (7).

To move beyond the impasse, Sandberg argues that women must be equally represented in positions of power.