Students Attend 'Lean In On Campus' Launch Viewing Party

A crowd of students gathered in the Student Organization Center at Hilles on Monday to watch a live video stream of Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl K. Sandberg ’91 at a viewing party to launch her “Lean In on Campus Campaign.”

Co-hosted by Harvard Undergraduate Women in Business, the Harvard College Women’s Center, and The Seneca, Inc., the event engaged a room full of Harvard students as well as thousands of students from more than 150 campuses around the world through virtual connections.

“Whether it’s the local town hall to the boardroom to our schoolhouses to our Congress, our voices aren’t equally heard at those tables,” Sandberg said.

Sandberg argued that deeply ingrained gender biases have led to the gap in the number of women in high leadership positions.

“We believe men should be aggressive, assertive, speak out, decide things,” she said. “All over the world, we believe women should give to others, be communal, speak when spoken to.”

Sandberg was optimistic about the prospects of combatting gender biases, telling the audience, “You are and will be the Lean In generation, the generation that brings the promise of equality to fruition.”

She advised women to exhibit greater confidence, as women are more likely than men to attribute their success to external factors, rather than to themselves.

“When a man is successful, he will believe that it is because of his own skill,” Sandberg said. “When a woman is successful, she and other people will ascribe that success to getting lucky, help from others, and working hard.”

Sandberg also made the case for men to “lean in,” explaining that men who have a better understanding of gender biases will have more influence in the workplace and “many more marriages proposals, more dates, [and] more nights out.”

According to Sandberg, men do not hold all of the blame for gender bias---which even she admitted to being guilty of at times--but she stressed that what women need the most from men is a greater understanding of this bias.

Sandberg also advised women who were entering “the real world” to first and foremost negotiate their entry salaries to ensure they are getting the same pay as men in the same position.

Audience reaction was positive, with applause and laughter following many of Sandberg’s remarks.

“I think there are really two main purposes of Lean In. I think the first one being to raise awareness, and the second to give support,” said Jasmine Griffin ’15, one of the event’s organizers.

“We think it in our heads, but we don’t actually realize that we apply [labels like ‘bossy’ and ‘aggressive’] to women as opposed to men,” said Sarah K. Schachman ’16, who signed up to be a Lean In leader at the event.