Sheryl Sandberg, Nancy Pelosi, and the Suburbanization of the Democratic Party

By now as all the post-2018 midterm elections have made clear, the Democratic Party’s blue wave was driven in larger part by female voters in middle class to affluent suburbs.  The question now to be answered is what will be the policy consequences of this?    Of course starting in January one will find out, with the question being will women do politics differently than men or will they conform to the rules of power that confront them?  The answer may be a little bit of both, but it is important to understand the perspective that the female suburbanization of the Democratic Party offers, and perhaps how the experiences of Sheryl Sandberg and Nancy Pelosi tell us something about what difference women do or do not make in the world of work and politics.
The question of whether women offer a unique perspective started with Carol Gilligan’s 1982 In a Different Voice.  It argued that men and women morally perceive the world in different ways, with the former depicting it in a hierarchical, right/wrong, black/white way versus a more nuanced  relational way.  Gilligan’s work was a landmark in psychology, paralleled by Mary Field Belenky’s, et al, 1986 Women’s Ways of Knowing and  Deborah Tannen’s 1990 You Just Don’t Understand,  which described the unique ways women come to learn, know, and communicate.  The core arguments for all three, and subsequent feminist writers, was that the unique experiences of women compared to men provide a female perspective in critical activities in life.  Men and women performing similar functions do things differently, might be one way to capture this idea.
Politically the argument would be that female legislatures would do politics differently, both in terms of style and policy agenda.  Margaret Conway’s 1995 Women and Public Policy noted important differences along these fronts, and since then other scholars have found contrasting ways men and women politically engage or act as public officials.  However, as other scholars, such as Robin West, have noted, lumping all women together in one group is stereotyping–there are important differences in perspectives among women based on race and class, for example. This is the concept of intersectionality recognizing the interplay of gender along with race, class, and sexual orientation,  for example. Much, but certainly not all of the  political research has focused on middle class white women, ignoring important perspective and policy differences that may divide women across a range of variables that also divide men.  Enter Sandberg and Pelosi.
Sandberg is a feminist icon to some for her book Lean In and claims that women should take charge.  Yet as many critics point out, she spoke with the voice of white affluent privilege, largely  ignoring the circumstances that women of color and less modest means face.  Her book was a claim that women would do business differently, but as the recent NY Times expose on Facebook and she revealed, it is hard to see how Sandberg brought a different way of doing business to the corporate world.  She adopted the same techniques and perhaps dirty tricks that men used when Facebook was challenged.
Nancy Pelosi ranks among the richest members of Congress, with net wealth estimated at nearly $30 million.  She is the former Speaker of the House, skilled legislatively, as a fundraiser, and as a leader.  It is hard to argue that her career has demonstrated a real difference compared to men in terms of the work she has done.  However both she and Sandberg are accomplished and represent one important perspective of women, but it is far from clear that they represent transformative figures that embody a unique female perspective.  They changed their worlds and conformed at the same time.
Why is all this significant?  The suburban blue wave that occurred on election day was one driven by affluent white women.  When it comes to partisan politics and policy,  the Democratic Party is largely being remade in the image of this powerful group of women.  If these women are the drivers of the Democratic Party now, their views should inevitably come to dominate as they take ownership of the party. Almost anyone, except former governor Chris Christie, gets this.  Sunday on ABC’s This Week when asked if it was a problem that women were not joining the Republican Party, he said they were welcome so long as they “believe in Republican philosophies and Republican approaches to government.”  Christie apparently thinks he and his other white male friends own the Republican  Party, define its orthodoxy, and that its principles are immutable.  Such an attitude is a recipe for political extinction.
The new Democratic Party will evolve;  it  is a party of women who share affinities with Sandberg and Pelosi.  It will be a perspective representing one set of middle to upper income values, but it is not clear that the interests served will necessarily be as progressive or as representative of the interests of the poor and people of color as some might think.  The challenge for the new Democratic Party will be how to hold together a constituency that contains suburban white women, people of color, urban liberals, and perhaps the poor.  These three sets of values are not necessarily compatible, and the challenge facing this new suburbanization of the Democratic Party is to ask whose preferences are not only included by excluded, and whether the female vote will really be transformative.

Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer: Class and the New Anti-Feminism

Perhaps just as the glass ceiling is being broken, women are yet again being blamed for their failure to succeed.  Or so it seems according to Sheryl Sandberg and  Marissa Mayer.
    Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book Lean In  is a NY Times bestseller. In it she contends that women fail to succeed because they lean back.   Specifically, they refuse to make their voice heard in business or make men take on equal shares of domestic tasks at home.  She recommends instead leaning in, speaking up, and simply asking for what one wants.  If only it were so easy.
    Sandberg’s book has been hailed by many as the new voice of feminism, advice from a smart successful, and rich woman who became one of the very few women to make it to the upper ranks of corporate America.  Yet her story is not that of a typical American woman.  It is the story of the  power and privilege of being born white and to the right parents.
    Sandberg is the daughter of privileged background.  Her father was an ophthalmologist, and her mother had a Ph.D.   Ms. Sandberg went to Harvard, secured her connections, and was successful in taking advantage of them.  No one denies she is smart, hardworking, and deserves all that she has earned.  But she got off to a start in life that only a few women–little alone men–enjoy, and is now in a position that few individuals are in now.  By the time she writes Lean In Sandberg has already succeeded, a billionaire and the head of a company.  It is a wonderful story and when she offers advice on how other women can succeed she seems to ignore the structural forces that many women still face.
    Conversely, Yahoo’s Marissa Meyer has taken a tough it out strategy when it comes to women.  She axed the work-from-home policy at Yahoo.   In an effort to revitalize the company she demanded everyone come to work.  Work-at-home policies have clearly helped women navigate child rearing and work.  But Meyer seems clueless about the problems working women face.  After she gave birth she remarked: “ Having a baby Is easier than I thought.”  Of  course it was.  She had a nursery built at work for her newborn and she did not have to worry about paying for child care.
    There is a reason why corporate America loves Sandberg’s book and Meyer–they take the heat off of them.  It is not the fault of corporate America that women are trapped by the glass ceiling or do not succeed.  It is because they fail to lean in.  It is not the fault of men for refusing to do their fair share of domestic work.  It is the fault of women for not asking.
    Sandberg and Meyer live in a reality different from most women.   They are not single divorced  moms living on a shoestring.  They did not grow up poor, Black, or Hispanic. They were not (as far as we know) victims of domestic abuse and they did drop out of college because they lacked money.  Their biographies are very different from most women.
    White women on average still earn approximately 77 cents on the dollar compared to men.  African-American women earn 64 cents, Hispanic 56 cents. Studies suggest that up to one-half of all women have faced sexual harassment at work, with about 95%+ of all sexual harassment victims being women.  In 2009 the median family income for a male-headed household was $48,000, for women it was $32,000.  Women of color again fare worse. Women  are more likely to be in poverty than men.  Women are far more likely to be victims of domestic abuse than men.  They come out economically worse after divorce than men (who generally come out economically better).   In college sports, universities continue to drag their feet in providing equal funding for women’s sports.
    Overall, 50 years after passage of the Equal Pay Act, nearly 50 years since the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and slightly more than 40 years after Title IX Education Amendments, women still significant  discrimination at work, home, and school.  This is the reality of the world most women live in, not the one that Sandberg and Meyer occupy.  But to listen to them it is the fault of women that they have not individually succeeded, ignoring the collective discrimination and barriers to success females continue to face.
    The feminism of Sandberg and Meyer is that of rich white women.  It is a view of the world  that forgets the experiences of most women, but it is mostly a view that is cloaked in class biases.  However, this would not be the first time individuals–male or female–have climbed to the top and forgot those  at the bottom.  It would also not be the first time those who have succeeded think that if they can do it why cannot the rest.  While no one doubts the accomplishments of Sandberg and Meyer, one  really needs to ask if they provide a guidance for success that most women can emulate.
.The point here is that neither Sandberg nor Meyer are typical of the average woman in America.  Their story is one of power and privilege.  They are rich enough now to have overcome the problems that most women face in their daily lives.