Monica E. Pierce - Leaning Out: An Alternative Perspective for the Modern Corporate Woman

Real Women with Real Praise
for the Lean Out Message

Thank you to you and your Lean Out message. Ive been looking for words to put to my feelings and your message is exactly how Im feeling! I cant wait to read more and learn to Lean Into my personal life more than my work life.

- Jaime B., mother of one, property manager

I just want you to know how much your message spoke to me. I appreciate your message and hope that other women discover it and identify with it, too!

- Anonymous, mother of two, occupational therapist

Great job starting this topic! My eyes have been opened to things I never knew existed for women who are both Leaning In and Leaning Out.

- Megan M., mother of four, entrepreneur

Im so happy to have found you! I just went back to work after my second baby and immediately decided I need to lean out!! Im so glad Im not alone in this feeling!!

- Alicea A., mother of two, former corporate Lean-Inner

Ive been practicing a lot of Lean Out. Im choosing my family and my sanity over what society thinks I need to be doing.

- Kristina N., mother of three, blogger

Leaning Out: An Alternative Perspective for the Modern Corporate Woman

Published by Gatekeeper Press
2167 Stringtown Rd, Suite 109
Columbus, OH 43123-2989
www.GatekeeperPress.com

Copyright 2020 by Monica Pierce
All rights reserved. Neither this book, nor any parts within it may be sold or reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

Cover Design by Books-Design.com

Library of Congress Control Number: 2019953909

ISBN (hardcover): 9781642378641
ISBN (paperback): 9781642378658
eISBN: 9781642378665

For my immortality project
Everett, Anastasia, and Tommy

Contents

Introduction

Who I Am

I am no one youve ever heard of. Im not a household name like Sheryl Sandberg or Megyn Kelly or Rachel Hollis. Im not a notable public figure or a highly accomplished business professional. Ill never appear on Forbes Top 30 Under 30 list for achieving great wealth or power. I havent launched a billion-dollar startup. I havent had a blog post go viral overnight. I dont speak on panels or at university commencement ceremonies. And although I have a solid education including a masters degree, neither of my alma maters carries any name recognition outside of California.

So why should you care what I have to say? Why did you decide to pick up this book when it was probably sitting next to one with an author much more noteworthy than me? Because the fact that I am average is the very point. Like you, I am an actual modern career woman.

While my rsum might not stand out much, Ive survived 15 years in the middle ranks of the modern corporate world while nurturing a loving marriage and raising three rambunctious, beautiful children. Ive done the performance evaluations, the design reviews, the team happy hours and the women-in-leadership conferences, all while handling maternity leaves, pumping sessions, daycare drama and vacation time used to stay home with sick kids. Im your average working woman in corporate America. But Im not average because Ive somehow failed to climb the ranks or make a name for myself. Im average because Ive deliberately chosen to be.

Unlike the big-name authors of the books sitting next to mine, Im not here to urge you to Lean In or to give you 10 magical tips for how to Have it All. There are enough voices in your life already doing just that. I want to offer you another option. I want you to critically consider what having it all actually means and instead think about designing a life around having only what you want, especially if what you want does not include a corner office.

Who We Are

This alternative message is for professional women who want a fulfilling career but do not want to climb up the corporate leadership ranks solely out of obligation. Its for us women who are confident in our choices yet sometimes feel guilty for not striving to reach our greatest professional potential. This message is for women who want to Lean Out when the world is urging us to Lean In. Its for women who think something must be wrong with us because we lack the baseline ambition every other professional woman around us seems to have.

Were mistakenly identified as either the working mother whos always frazzled, the victimized office female whos oppressed by sexist colleagues, or the corporate go-getter who doesnt have time for marriage or a family because shes busy kicking ass. But we arent any of these extreme clichs. We are respected, successful and balanced women who have it together. We are fortunate because, for us, there is no glass ceiling of low self-esteem, sexist leaders, high childcare costs or unequal pay. We dont feel limited by the fact that were female. On the contrary. Were fortunate to have so much opportunity and confidence to pursue it that we actually feel obligated to achieve as much as we possibly can. We feel guilty if were not accomplishing the amazing things we know were capable of. We are stuck in an uncomfortable, misunderstood space between great professional potential and conflicting personal ambivalence.

Yet no one ever speaks of us because they dont realize we exist. Image 1 describes the groups that women are commonly associated with and where we actually fit in amongst them.

Group A is where we women have found ourselves since the dawn of time. Its where the womens movement originated and continues to live. As long as there are still women in this category, we must continue fighting for them because we all agree that every single woman deserves the same opportunities as her male peers. Eventually, this group will disappear entirely because all women will have equal opportunity.

Group B is all of us who benefited from the original womens movement and now have the same access to education and professional opportunity as our male peers. Many womens rights advocates feel Group A and B are mutually exclusive. They believe there is no Group B until all members of Group A have equal opportunity, which is why they still paint such a broad brush when preaching for womens equality, even though theyre often preaching to those of us who already have it.

Group C is women who have equal opportunity and work in areas other than the corporate world (such as education, medicine, or the arts) or they are stay-at-home-parents. Its likely that these women are not familiar with the pressure to Lean In and achieve impressive titles or power because it is something that is fairly unique to those of us in the corporate world. They might have scheduled work hours so they arent exposed to the corporate politics world where ones value is inferred based on how many hours are put in at the office or how late at night one continues responding to emails. Women in Group C have their own set of challenges and their roles are just as demanding as those of us in the corporate world. But they are a different set of challenges making some of what well talk about in this book not as relevant for women in this group.

Group D is all of us who work in the corporate world and are urged daily to climb the ladder and Lean In. Conferences, magazine articles... everywhere we turn, were hit with stories about why we need more women at the top, here are some amazing women who made it to the top and how you can get to the top. There is never any mention of anything other than getting to the top. This is where the issue begins.