Lean In? How About Lean Back

The struggle many women who want to have children go through while trying to keep their careers on track fuels a robust industry of books, paid speeches, and symposiums. College-educated women, the frustrated consumers of these products, lurch from guru to guru, wondering why each new best-seller or TED Talk changes little. The most recent contributor is Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose book Unfinished Business may upend Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In as the reigning work-life balance manual.

By building on arguments Sandberg made before her, and diverging from them considerably, Slaughter, chief executive officer of the think tank New America and a former dean at Princeton, offers a realistic assessment of the persistent gender inequality that ails our late capitalist economy. After years of being told they can do anything they want while men still behave as if it’s the 1950s, women are ready to hear the truth: Nothing is going to change for professional women in the realm of work, life, and family demands until men get on board.