NPR – by EYDER PERALTASheryl Sandberg doesn’t like a word a lot of people and parents use to describe little girls.
In an editorial for The Wall Street Journal, she called it “the other B-word.” She says as a kid, she didn’t really play with other kids, instead the current chief operating officer of Facebook used to organize their play.
In junior high, Sandberg recounts, a teacher stopped her best friend and told her: “Nobody likes a bossy girl. You should find a new friend who will be a better influence on you.”
In an interview with All Things Considered, Sandberg says she is launching a public service campaign aimed at getting rid of the word.
“This is a very negative experience for girls, if you look at my childhood, if you look at the childhood of most of the leaders we talked to, they lived through being told they were bossy,” Sandberg said. “And it has such a strongly female, and such a strongly negative connotation, that we thought the best way to raise awareness was to say, ‘This isn’t a word we should use. Let’s start encouraging girls to lead.’ ”
Sandberg, of course, stirred a ton of controversy last spring with her book Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which she called a “sort of a feminist manifesto.” In the book, she encouraged women to “lean in” to their careers, embrace ambition and resist the tendency to hold back when they anticipate challenges in their work-life balance.
As our friends at 13.7 explained, she was criticized for being a successful woman with a lot of money giving advice to women who don’t have the same resources. Maureen Dowd famously dismissed her as a “PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots.”
This initiative is in some ways simpler. As Sandberg explains on her website, when a boy asserts himself, society calls him a leader. When a girl does it, she is called bossy.
“Words like bossy send a message: Don’t speak up or take the lead. By middle school, girls are less interested in leading than boys — a trend that continues into adulthood,” the website explains.
Sandberg was asked if this was really still an issue, being that girls are outperfoming boys academically. She said:
“I actually think that we are conflating issues of academic performance and leadership. And in one area, girls are leading, and in one area, boys are leading. And a lot of people are confusing those. And that’s why the research has been so important, because it teases those apart. Where girls are definitely leading is they’re outperforming boys academically. We see that. They’re getting more of the college degrees; they’re outperforming in every school. And I think what’s happening is that teachers, parents, people are more worried about boys, and there are a lot of good reasons to be worried about boys. We, of course, want boys to perform academically. When it comes to leadership, when you look at the numbers for student governments, when you look at the numbers for people running for office, when you look at the data asking middle school kids if they want to lead — it’s still really overwhelmingly male.”
As for what she would tell teachers, Sandberg said:
“I think a lot of these biases are really not very well understood. And we all have them, myself included. And so I think one of the things you’re speaking about really comes up which is that, almost every teacher thinks they’re calling on boys and girls evenly. No one’s trying to call on boys more. But time and again, blind studies show that we actually are calling on boys more, even though we don’t realize it. Most parents think they have equal expectations for their daughters and sons, but when they’re observed, the language patterns found that they’re actually encouraging their boys more to lead. So a part of the denial of this, that ‘Oh, this isn’t a problem, this is the old generation’s problem,’ is part of what we’re trying to speak out against. … In this case, we suggest that teachers do a little audit of themselves — keep track, you know, throw a little data at their own performance so that they can really see what they’re doing.”
If what’s her face doesn’t like ‘bossy’… maybe she requires ‘bitch’!
I’m sure that she would not hesiate to use whatever language she wanted to describe anyone other than herself, particularly if those others hold a different viewpoint than her own.
She’s just another stupid bitch.
Makes me sick that this ignorant clam describes her feminist self a leader. But she is right…we shouldn’t call her bossy we should call her a micromanaging bitch instead.
It’s not that she’s wrong or right about bossiness vs. leadership vis-a-vis gender, but that there is this certain mindset of telling other people what to do, how to live, what to say (and most importantly, what NOT to say). The atmosphere of “correctness.” Which is squelching, which is anti-freedom, anti-individual. Too much externally-induced care and concern for not hurting others’ feelings breeds self-censorship and incorrect belief that one is “doing the right thing.” But the thing is, top-down forcing people to be a certain way, or not be a certain way, is power and control over others and is enslaving and subtly molding of our behaviors — make no mistake about that. It takes away our freedom to learn from our mistakes. And also it lies by hiding the fact that psychopaths exist as a significant (though small) percentage of our population. By teaching us to self-censor, to self-squelch, it allows psychopaths free rein to do as they will, tricking us into silence. We may become to afraid to speak out, due to politeness. We learn self doubt, and self blame, and artificial “feeling good about ourselves” through conforming our behaviors to the induced norm. I do not know if this powerful woman is a deluded dupe or one of the psychopaths, but “ban bossy” as well as all those other politically incorrect words we are supposed to ban these days, is sugar-coated poison. In my opinion, which I will continue to freely express and call a spade a spade, to anyone taken in by this invitation to walk down this path of delusion.
On another, but related note: it is also my opinion that rather than focus on the person who is doing the offending (by saying that bad B-word), a more productive place to focus would be on the person being offended. I find it interesting that our society is increasingly encouraging a cult of victimhood, of people who need endless reparations and affirmative actions and apologies in order to feel vindicated or get over their woundings. Newsflash: life can be very painful for most of us, in one way or another. That’s the nature of it. And we can whine about it and seek others’ pity, or we can face it (afraid or unafraid) and get through it and come out on the other side, a much wiser person.
If we sugar coat everything and clean it all up and ban these words which really are not offensive (but become so because somebody suddenly says they are), then do we spare folks the opportunity to grow through adversity? Hmm.
Who gets to dictate the meaning of our experience? That should be self determined, IMO.
Hahahaha Sheryl Sandberg ,
“She says as a kid, she didn’t really play with other kids, instead the current chief operating officer of Facebook used to organize their play.”
And something she obviously still tells herself (In her own mind today.)
Back when I was a kid “Bossy” usually meant self-centered, spoiled little brat that didn’t play well with others (some might just have issues that friends helped with :), and usually just wanted everything their way.
Our group didn’t really play with them and they Didn’t organize Our play.
A leader (Back in those days) was the one with the knowledge or creativity to help get us to our goal, and our group had many leaders (Though we didn’t use ” the word leader”,) they were just the kid that knew more in that area than we did) depending on who was good at what.
I think we were all leaders in different areas and we were good with that.
The term Bossy still applies in pretty much the same way today, as it did back then.
Bossy (woman) = Arrogant beotch
Bossy (man) = Arrogant prick or ba$tard
Both likely to stab someone in the back for self advancement
Leader = knowledgable, creative can work independantly or with a team to accomplish goal
JustMHO
Good one for sure RT
Yeah Digger,
Bet she suffers from CDO lol!
Isn’t Bossy a cow’s name?
What’s that b#tch got against cows, anyway?
Oh boy, another “B” word to be banned so saith the Communists. Just like “BOMB”. Maybe they should just ban the letter, “B” from the alphabet. In that case, they wouldn’t be able to say, “Ban” because that is a “B” letter-ed word. I guess they will have to use “outlawed” instead.
While they are at it, I’m sure they will start outlawing the letter “G”, since the word, “Gun” begins with that letter.
I know! How about we ban all letters and words except “UN”. That’s the only word we and the rest of the world will ever need after we are all dumb down to a two letter word or acronym in this case.
Pathetic.