Sheryl Sandberg

Every social-justice movement has to uproot the power of internalised oppression and colonised minds. That’s especially hard for women because we live in the same house as the so-called superior group and don’t have a neighbourhood of our own, much less a country. With her new foundation and book, Lean In, Sheryl Sandberg is opposing both external and internal barriers to equality, which is one reason she’s misunderstood in an either/or world. Another is that she herself is successful. For a woman to be loved, she has to fail, and for a man to be loved, he has to succeed. That’s what the gender police say, and it’s inhuman and unfair to both men and women. Among her most radical suggestions is that if a woman wants children, her most important career decision is who her partner is, and if a man wants children, he could also raise them. This could begin to free us from gender police forever.