Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead

Women are in the midst of a revolutionary reckoning with our ambitions. We’re not resigning en masse—because who can afford to quit her job in this economy?!—but we are trying to figure out a new set of goals and guidance for our professional lives. Thanks to long-simmering inequality and stubborn sexism, clarified by the pain of the pandemic, our ... See more

Yet the decision to step down from a position of power—to value family over professional advancement, even for a time—is directly at odds with the prevailing social pressures on career professionals in the United States.

If you ask working women with families why they step off the leadership track, it’s often not just because of what happens at the office. Rather, it’s because of the combined effect of their daytime job together with their second job of managing the incessant responsibilities of household and family care: what needs to be done, who needs to be wher... See more

I’m a criminal-defense lawyer, a law professor, and a mother of two. When my children were young and I was offered professional opportunities that separated me from them—a case hundreds of miles from home, an academic presentation out of state—I took them. The work gave shape and purpose to my life. And yet. Because time is finite, deficits added u

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