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The Nation: ‘Lean In’ has been discredited for good

The Nation, November 20, 2018: ‘Lean in’ has been discredited for good 

Five years after its publication, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s corporate feminist manifesto, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, is back in the news—although, perhaps, not how she ever envisioned it would be.

Just six months after the Cambridge Analytica scandal broke open Facebook’s shoddy oversight of user data, an explosive New York Times investigative report revealed that Sandberg, along with CEO Mark Zuckerberg, downplayed Russia’s interference in the 2016 US election, ignored warnings that the platform was being used as a propaganda tool for ethnic cleansing, and engaged its own disinformation campaign, taking brass knuckles to America’s battered and increasingly vulnerable democratic institutions.

Last week’s damning report about Facebook’s actions ended that conversation for good. Jezebel snarked about “leaning out,” The Atlanticchided Sandberg for actions that “just don’t mesh with the girl-power clichés that pepper her book,” and Jessica Crispin, in The Guardian,contended that: “Feminists gave Sheryl Sandberg a free pass. Now they must call her out.”

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