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Chinese Women Still Seek a Seat at the Table - Roseann Lake - The Atlantic
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BROOKLYN
Sheryl Sandberg's message has resonated in a country where women still struggle to balance
their professional and personal lives.
ROSEANN LAKE OCT 7 2013, 7:00 AM ET
The Rise and Fall—
and Rise—of Facial
Hair
Hey, it was good enough for
Abraham Lincoln.
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Sheryl Sandberg's recent visit to Beijing has inspired great interest in her message of female
empowerment. (Andy Wong/AP)
BEIJING—As she strode out in tune with the strobe lights and Star Wars­
inspired theme music which had been chosen for her entrance, Facebook COO
Sheryl Sandberg placed a water bottle on the podium and walked right past it
towards the lip of the stage. During the ensuing 24 minutes, she spoke to the
predominantly female audience of several hundred power­heel wearing
professionals about the importance of “leaning in,” claiming their “rightful
place at the table,” and marrying a man who changes diapers. A few minutes into the speech, the Chinese woman sitting next to me
whispered: “She is elegant enough to be a first lady.” I nodded in approval until,
suddenly, we looked at each other and said “No, president!”
That we made this “mistake” while attending an event of such female caliber
seems inexcusable. But in truth, Sandberg’s bouffant and smile strikingly
resemble those of Jacqueline Kennedy. It’s also hardly an insult to be compared
www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinese-women-still-seek-a-seat-at-the-table/280240/
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Chinese Women Still Seek a Seat at the Table - Roseann Lake - The Atlantic
to a First Lady—though Forbes ranks Sandberg one notch above Michelle
Obama on its “World’s Most Powerful Women” list—but even still: It was
alarming both of us associated even the most powerful of women with the role
of “second fiddle.”
Gender equality still has a ways to go in China. While women in the country
actually have a higher representation in the People’s Congress than American
women do in the U.S. Congress, their influence is small and confined to a few
select areas such as education and healthcare.
Similar patterns exist on college campuses. As of 2010, Chinese women earn
the majority of bachelor’s degrees in China, and their presence in masters,
doctoral, and business school programs is steadily increasing. But as Xiang
Bing, Director of the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business (CKGSB)
pointed out in his in speech prior to Sandberg’s, while women account for
nearly half his school’s MBA alumni, they only represent 18 percent of the
Executive MBA graduates. Sources associated with CKGSB even suggest that a
healthy portion of the females enrolled in the program may be there primarily
to find a wealthy husband.
Rigid gender roles are well­entrenched in China, a country where young girls
grow up learning xue de hao bu ru yi jia de hao, a phrase translating as “it’s
better to marry well than to study well.” Still­influential Confucian values
dictate that a man should be superior to his wife in terms of salary and
education, and as a result many women with college degrees find themselves
unwanted in China’s marriage market.
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Enter Sheryl Sandberg. Even before the Facebook COO set foot in Beijing,
several grassroots “Lean In” groups, inspired by her bestselling book of the
same name, had sprouted up across the country. Though many of these groups
are officially registered on Sandberg’s platform site, LeanIn.org, their
objectives are tailored to local needs. One of the first groups of this kind, a
Lean In Circle comprised of 13 young women from China, Taiwan, Hong Kong,
Singapore, and the U.S., lists “involving men,” as one of its goals. “Women will
only be able to fully ‘lean in’ if the men around them—their husbands,
coworkers and bosses, and potential mentors—provide support,” is one of the
group’s key written objectives.
Their initiative is especially needed in China, where a woman’s professional
success, no matter how exceptional, remains secondary to the importance given
to her marital status. Marriage is such a dominant social force that, according
to numbers from the National Bureau of Statistics, less than 2 percent of
Chinese females remain unmarried by the age of 38. Whether they choose to
marry or end up acquiescing to marriage pressure is a separate issue, but
modern women struggle to ensure that their life partners are supporting,
rather than inhibiting, their professional and personal ambitions.
“Society is less forgiving and accepting of diverse lifestyles and types of
accomplishments; families place tremendous pressure on their children to
achieve high incomes and stable family lives, even if these come at the expense
of individual happiness,” says Mariel Reed, an American woman who co­
founded the Lean In Beijing group with Allison Ye, a native of China’s Jiangxi
Province. “There is a need in China for a more diverse, personally­tailored
definition of success.”
Charlotte Han, one of the principal organizers of Lean In Beijing’s group
activities, and part of a group who met Sandberg at a private event at Peking
University, echoes Reed’s sentiments. “She said we were the first international
circle outside of the U.S. that she got to meet, and she had tears in her eyes,”
reports Han. “After meeting her, I want to lean in more decisively. For me
www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinese-women-still-seek-a-seat-at-the-table/280240/
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Chinese Women Still Seek a Seat at the Table - Roseann Lake - The Atlantic
personally, the “lean in” attitude is about pursuing what I love and want—it’s
motivation to proactively engage in meaningful and challenging work which will
help me learn, take initiative, and be responsible for myself.”
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For Han, a recent college graduate, one of the most meaningful quotes of
Sandberg’s book was: “Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized.”
She keeps this in mind as she increases her involvement in volunteer work and
uses the experience to help polish her skills outside her tedious day job at a
state­owned enterprise.
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As part of Lean In Beijing’s efforts, which now include monthly circle meetings
where women discuss everything from staving off marriage ultimatums from
parents to rebounding from a devastating divorce, the team has also just
released the preliminary results of a survey they developed. Based on a
sampling of nearly 500 working women, their results indicate that “establishing
a work­life balance,” “negotiating maternity leave,” “making sacrifices for the
career of their other half,” and “being outnumbered by males in top­positions,”
are the greatest challenges for professional females.
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Though women around the world share these challenges, Chinese women face a
number of extra hurdles that would seem unusual elsewhere. Job ads in China
often specify that female applicants be of a certain height, weight, or
complexion—just to work in an office. Companies advertising for female staff
under a certain age or of a certain marital status are also not uncommon.
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“In some ways, young married women with children have it easiest,” says Susan
Rui, a working professional in Beijing. “Because of the one­child policy,
employers can be relatively certain that they won’t have to grant them
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Precisely because of these extremes, the Facebook COO’s speech and the advice
contained in her bestselling book couldn’t have fallen on more receptive ears.
But will Chinese women be able to turn this advice into an actionable
blueprint?
In a post­China Facebook wall post summarizing the highlights of her trip,
Sandberg acknowledged that Chinese women may have a rough time of finding
an equal partner due to a continued preference for male children and the
persistent belief that a happy couple is one where the man is more ‘successful’
than his wife. “... But these are the same cultural norms which continue to hold
women back all over the world as success is perceived positively for men, and
often mixed or even negatively for women,” she wrote, earning nearly 2,000
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On top of the societal misgivings surrounding female success, there’s also the
common misconception that this success is limited, as pointed out by Lean In
Beijing co­founder, Reed. “So often—and as women, especially—we tend to see
others’ success as an assault to our own,” she says. “We imagine that there is
only so much of this magical thing, ‘success,’ to go around, and when someone
else does something amazing, that weakens our ability to achieve. Actually, it’s
the opposite—and to the extreme!” The experience of reading Sandberg’s book
and seeing the success of one member of the Lean In Beijing group “transfer” to
the other members has taught her to re­evaluate her feelings.
Notably absent from Sandberg’s visit to China was any special focus on
Facebook, which has been blocked on the Mainland since July 2009 following
ethnic riots in the Chinese region of Xinjiang. Instead, an internal message
board flashed behind Sandberg as she spoke, projecting “tweets” to the
audience. “She is so beautiful!” said one. “More men in China must wash
clothes!” read another.
www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/10/chinese-women-still-seek-a-seat-at-the-table/280240/
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Chinese Women Still Seek a Seat at the Table - Roseann Lake - The Atlantic
But the lack of Facebook access in China didn’t dilute enthusiasm for
Sandberg’s message. “Sheryl Sandberg says ‘make your partner a real partner,’”
wrote one young Chinese woman on her Weixin account, a popular Chinese
social network. With it, she posted a photo of a man riding the subway while
carrying his girlfriend’s purse, a common sign of chivalry in China. “But not like
this.”
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ROSEANN LAKE is a writer based in Beijing.
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