{"id":5229,"date":"2017-07-30T10:33:26","date_gmt":"2017-07-30T08:33:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/?p=5229"},"modified":"2017-07-30T10:44:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-30T08:44:32","slug":"facebook-feminism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/5229\/","title":{"rendered":"Facebook Feminism"},"content":{"rendered":"

Until somebody decided to shoot up a nightclub in Germany, this<\/a> was running as front-page news on the BBC’s website:<\/p>\n

\n

Fairer pay for women must be backed up by stronger policies at work, according to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg.<\/p>\n

But the firm’s chief operating officer, in an interview for BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, said the first step is to “start paying women well”.<\/p>\n

She chose Beyonce’s empowering Run The World (Girls) as her first song.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This\u00a0Beyonc\u00e9:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It’s one way to become empowered, I suppose.<\/p>\n

She said: “We start telling little girls not to lead at a really young age and we start to tell boys [to] lead at a very young age. That is a mistake.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We do? Okay, I can probably believe that in some countries with cultures we’re encouraged to embrace that little girls are told not to lead, but in the West? Really? Who is saying this, and where? This is bullshit.<\/p>\n

“I believe everyone has inside them the ability to lead…”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Then you’re an idiot. Not everyone is a leader, just as not everyone is a loyal lieutenant, and not everyone is an essential specialist, and not everyone is an equally important plodder<\/a>. If you’ve not understood this, you’ve not understood leadership at all.<\/p>\n

“…and we should let people choose that not based on their gender but on who they are and who they want to be.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Oh please. We’ve had women leaders since at least Cleopatra. Who, and where, are girls being told they cannot lead because of their gender? All I see on the webpages of major corporations is how important women are and how proud they are to have a load of them in senior positions. The fact we have a female COO carping at us in the national press ought to tell us that this isn’t really a problem. Whereas it is boys that are being failed by schools, more girls than boys are graduating from college and now lead in such fields as law and medicine, and young men are still committing suicide at a far higher rate than women.<\/p>\n

Ms Sandberg made headlines in 2013 with her book “Lean in” about female empowerment in the workplace.<\/p>\n

It became a worldwide bestseller, but was criticised by some for being elitist and unrealistic for many women not in her privileged position.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You mean not all women agreed, and cat-fighting ensued? I don’t believe it.<\/p>\n

In the interview, she also called for more to be done around the gender pay gap between men and women.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The gender pay gap that Christina Hoff Sommers has debunked<\/a> numerous times as being a complete myth?<\/p>\n

Ms Sandberg admitted she had struggled with self-doubt at Harvard<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The BBC’s poster-child for female empowerment and leadership wrung her hands in self-doubt while at America’s top university? Did Katherine the Great doubt herself?<\/p>\n

…and recognised that women more than men underestimated their own worth, preventing them from putting themselves forward or asking for a pay rise.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

A minute ago everyone was capable of leadership, and we need more women in such positions. Now we find they underestimate themselves. Sorry, but I prefer anyone presuming to be my leader to be a little less wet. Attila the Hun is my benchmark.<\/p>\n

“We need to start paying women well and we need the public and the corporate policy to get there,” she said.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Says the woman who made over $18m<\/a> in 2016.<\/p>\n

“Certainly, women applying for jobs at the same rate as men, women running for office at the same rate as men, that has got to be part of the answer.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

As Christina Hoff Sommers repeatedly<\/a> says, there is nothing stopping women going into higher-paid professions such as engineering and computer programming, they simply choose not to. The women who chose to become engineers are absolutely coining it. I can think of two now, one owns half of Melbourne (*waves*) and another spends much of her life flying around on holiday in business-class (*waves again*).<\/p>\n

Following the sudden death of her husband Dave Goldberg, Ms Sandberg described herself a “different” person now.<\/p>\n

She found him on the floor of a gym with a head injury after he had suffered a heart attack whilst they were on a weekend away.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Okay, I’ll dial it down a notch here. Losing your husband is catastrophic, and I am all too familiar with its effects. That she’s managed to carry on so well afterwards is genuinely worthy of admiration, and she deserves a lot of respect and sympathy over this.<\/p>\n

I still hate the BBC, though.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Until somebody decided to shoot up a nightclub in Germany, this was running as front-page news on the BBC’s website: Fairer pay for women must be backed up by stronger policies at work, according to Facebook’s Sheryl Sandberg. But the … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[57,85,79,60],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5229"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5234,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5229\/revisions\/5234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5229"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5229"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.desertsun.co.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5229"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}