Sheryl Sandberg's recent book Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead has received a great deal of attention. It represents the latest contribution to debates about how women can pursue both a fulfilling family life and a career.

After discussing her motivation for writing the book in addition to how and why women continue to hold themselves back, she puts forth three key pieces of advice:

            1) "Sit at the table":  Rather than hanging back, women need to keep their hands up and advocate for their ideas.

            2) "Don't leave before you leave":  Many women unnecessarily limit themselves and don't take advantage of opportunities because they're making room for partners and families who may not even exist yet. Instead, women should continue forging ahead and grasp opportunities that will allow them to advance in their careers.

            3) "Make your partner a real partner": Many women still take on the majority of child and home care tasks. Sandberg suggests that choosing a partner is the most important career choice a woman can make. To that end, women should ensure they choose someone who is committed to a fifty-fifty partnership in every domain.

Even before the book became available, a great deal of heated and vitriolic backlash flooded the press. Of particular interest are those critiques that address Sandberg's position of power and the circumstances that allowed her to arrive there. 

Jodi Kantor's February 21, 2013 New York Times article "A Titan's How-To on Breaking the Glass Ceiling" is the piece that started the debate. She mentions the "awkwardness" of an individual with a 9,000 square-foot house, two Harvard degrees, and stocks in both Facebook and Google attempting to goad women in less comfortable circumstances to work harder and develop themselves. She goes on to question whether women can really take the advice of someone whose book acknowledgements include Oprah Winfrey.

In "Pompom Girl for Feminism," Maureen Dowd describes Sandberg as "charmed." She goes on to write that Sandberg has "a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots." On Sandberg's point about leaving work each day at 5:30 pm to have dinner with her family, Dowd points out: "you might have to be Sheryl Sandberg to get away with that."

Finally, Melissa Gira Grant wrote in The Washington Post that Sandberg's message is really just "the elite leading the slightly less elite" all for the sake of a bottom line. She also argues that what will eventually come out of Sandberg's "Lean In" movement is too focused on individual women and their ambitions rather than the ambitions of working class women. Working class women, after all, are the ones who make it possible for elite women like Sandberg to "lean in" in the first place.

These critiques have two features in common. The first is that all of them are ad hominem attacks in the sense that they attack a person rather than an argument. The fact that Sandberg is wealthy and was able to take advantage of one of the best university educations the world has to offer does not make her wrong. Those who choose to partake in this debate must ensure they are examining Sandberg's arguments rather than her. 

Secondly, these critics assume that women who speak out about the challenges women face in achieving work-life balance must speak for all women. In short, for Sandberg's advice to be relevant and useful, it must be so for all women. 

I want to examine this second attitude, which is rooted deeply in a collectivist thinking that is characteristic of Marxist and Socialist forms of feminism. Situating critics' responses to Sandberg's book within these schools of thought will serve as a step toward demonstrating why they are flawed.

The idea that achieving liberation for women must be done in tandem with ensuring social and economic justice for all is not new. One can find the basis of this thought in Marxist feminist work such as that of Alexandra Kollontai. In her 1909 pamphlet "The Social Basis of the Woman Question," Kollontai highlights that bourgeois women fight for equality within the system that already exists, rather than challenging that system and the privileges it confers. She even makes a very similar point to some of Sandberg's critics: bourgeois women were able to achieve economic independence because they reaped the benefits of working women's labor.

Scholars and activists today have the same line of reasoning. In 2000, Johanna Brenner wrote in Women and the Politics of Class that it is really educated women rather than women as a whole who have benefited from feminist struggles for equal access to education and employment. Her primary objection to more individualist ways of thinking about these issues is her recognition that women have different resources for competing in the market. 

Finally, Barbara Ehrenreich argued in her 1976 article "What is Socialist Feminism?" that women's subjugation is inevitably tied up with class struggle. The working class is now cut off from the larger society, and women's isolation, she writes, is a key part of this change. Women's skills are discredited to make room for commodities, and women are passive and silent in these economic and societal shifts. 

Each of these thinkers makes the same point: collective struggle should be the primary focus for women who seek to enact change.

There are three main flaws with regard to collectivist feminist critiques of Sandberg's work. The first is that collective feminists do not adequately demonstrate where the obligation to the working class (and thus all women) comes from. There appears to be no discernible logical basis for such obligations. In this sense, they are assumed. Without clear justification for such an assumption, it is difficult to find such collectivist thinking convincing. The backlash against Sandberg also makes the same assumption without ever providing a logical justification for it.

The second flaw is the disconnect between the macro- and micro-levels in Sandberg's work and collectivist feminism. Sandberg is writing on a micro-level. In this sense, she is writing for women who have the ability to lead in their respective workplaces and who want to have a family. Not all women (and not all men) can be leaders because not all have the desire, the will, or the talent. In short, Sandberg isn't talking to all women. Sandberg's critics, however, are writing at the macro-level. They are addressing all women, which isn't Sandberg's intended audience. Pitching critiques at the macro-level, however, does not address whether Sandberg's arguments are good.

Finally, collectivist feminists attempt to speak on behalf of working class women. There has been no word from the working class on Sandberg's work or on how it perceives its circumstances. Collectivist feminists would likely respond that grueling work hours and exploitation make it difficult for working class women to give their opinion on the matter. Whether that's true or not, only working class women can speak for themselves. And to claim that they cannot speak for themselves because they've been too disenfranchised is not only a rather "convenient out"; it's also exhibiting the very type of demeaning attitude toward women that feminists so often decry. By speaking for the working class, collectivist feminists exhibit the very same elitism of which they accuse Sandberg.

In short, just because Sandberg can't help all women with her book doesn't mean she can't help some of them. And it doesn't mean that she can't help herself. As she mentions in her work, writing this book is what she would do if she weren't afraid.  There is something deeply psychologically satisfying about acting with this kind of courage and reclaiming one's dreams and aspirations. 

For those who are still worried about the benefits to others, consider this: when people like Sandberg become COO of Facebook, it helps dispel myths that such levels of achievement are impossible for women. In addition, what Sandberg really seems to be saying in her book is that people ought to take themselves and their ideas seriously by sitting at the table, taking advantage of opportunities, and demanding only the very best from relationships. All people in all walks of life can do this whether they are leaders or not. This is something we can all "lean into."

Allison Quatrini is a Ph.D. student in political science at George Washington University, where she has taught courses in both comparative politics and international relations. Her research focuses on contemporary China. She has held fellowships from Fulbright, Foreign Language Area Studies, and the State Department Title VIII Research and Training in Eastern Europe and Eurasia.

The views expressed by the author are not necessarily endorsed by this organization and are simply provided as food for thought from Mom Think.