For all her accomplishments, few things have clearly mattered more to Sheryl Sandberg than being the voice of modern American feminism.
Now we know: Sandberg, who is stepping down as COO of Meta after 14 years, is little more than another Silicon Valley monster, monetizing her personal story while exploiting everyone and everything she can. Feminist leadership was just Sandberg’s Trojan horse. It still is.
In July, Meta gave Nebraska police access to private Facebook communications between a 17-year-old girl and her mother. The girl was 23 weeks pregnant and planning an abortion, which has been illegal in the state after 20 weeks since 2010.
The prosecutor in the case said this is the first felony charge of its kind there, as Roe — overturned in June — didn’t allow for states to legally enforce their own bans until 24 weeks. Nebraska’s prosecutor charged the girl’s mother with a felony after reading her Facebook exchanges with her daughter.
This from a company that stresses how much they value user privacy. A company that’s vowed to cover travel expenses for any employee needing abortion access.
Not that Sandberg has anything to say about this latest hypocrisy — except for a Facebook post shortly after Roe was overturned, calling the decision “a huge setback. For ourselves, our daughters, and every generation that follows, we must keep up the fight. Together, we must protect and expand abortion access.”
Just another sentiment without backup. It’s very on-brand for Sandberg, who doesn’t mention the myriad scandals she’s facing in her resignation announcement. Nope, wouldn’t you know: She’s doing it for the sisterhood.
“I am not entirely sure what the future will bring,” Sandberg posted on Facebook in June. “But I know it will include focusing more on my foundation and philanthropic work, which is more important to me than ever given how critical this moment is for women.”
Says the power broker who reportedly tried to spike, on two separate occasions, a story the Daily Mail had about her then-boyfriend, Activision CEO Bobby Kotick, getting a temporary restraining order taken out against him by a former girlfriend in 2014. Sandberg reportedly threatened the Mail’s future working relationship with Facebook.
The company denied any such interference: “Sheryl Sandberg,” said Facebook, “never threatened the MailOnline’s business relationship with Facebook in order to influence an editorial decision.”
Then there’s her 2013 bestseller “Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead,” which spoke to a very thin slice of women: namely, already successful and moneyed. From Oprah to Katie Couric to elite college campuses, Sandberg — who somehow couldn’t commit to calling her book a “feminist manifesto” — argued that women ourselves are to blame for career stagnation.
Not pre-COVID corporate structures, not the demands of motherhood or gender disparities or pay gaps or the lack of help at home (single mothers, by the way, were ignored by Sandberg). Not the women who don’t have nannies or housekeepers or billions in the bank and private jets at their disposal, as Sandberg does — no, it’s our own fault. Just be more like Sheryl!
The retrograde advice Sandberg offered in “Lean In” — which had a co-author who, I guarantee, did all the heavy lifting — included such gems as be “relentlessly pleasant” and “‘appropriately’ female,” whatever that means.
As Michelle Obama said in 2018, “It’s not always enough to lean in, because that s–t doesn’t work all the time.”
Yes!
It wasn’t until Sandberg faced her own tragedy, the sudden death of husband Dave Goldberg in 2015 — one she turned into another co-authored bestseller, “Option B: Facing Adversity, Building Resilience, and Finding Joy” — that she admitted taking her privilege for granted.
“I did not really get how hard it is to succeed at work,” she said, “when you are overwhelmed at home.”
In a contemporaneous Time magazine cover story, Sandberg also raved about our evil overlord Mark Zuckerberg. “Mark’s one of the people who really carried me,” Sandberg said. “I believe even more I work with the greatest person in the world.”
That was then. Now, as Sandberg faces a deposition over the Cambridge Analytica scandal and is under internal investigation for using company resources to subsidize her book, her recent wedding and her foundation, as well as using Facebook underlings for personal tasks — well, Sheryl Sandberg is no longer a value-add.
She is also no longer heir apparent to Gloria Steinem. As the Wall Street Journal reported last September, nothing was done even after an internal investigation found that teenage girls especially were harmed by what they see on Instagram (which is owned by Facebook) — an addiction the company fosters as Big Tobacco does.
Still today, Sandberg says nothing. Want to bet she still keeps her own children off social media, as most Silicon Valley execs do — even as we now know that her company has been targeting children? That’s right: No Facebook, no Instagram for her kids, she said.
So goodbye and good riddance to Sheryl Sandberg, who failed to lean in when it mattered most. Women and girls are better off without you.
mcallahan@nypost.com
