Pushing back on bias: Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In launches girls leadership program

abcnews.go.com:

Ten years after publishing her book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” Sheryl Sandberg will launch a girls leadership program Thursday through her foundation to respond to what she calls stubborn gender inequities

Ten years after publishing her book “Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead,” Sheryl Sandberg will launch a girls leadership program Thursday through her foundation to respond to what she calls stubborn gender inequities.

“What we realized is that in order to really get to equality, equality in leadership everywhere, from our parliaments to our statehouses to our homes, we’re going to have to go younger,” Sandberg said in an interview with The Associated Press.

The girls leadership program, which includes a middle-school curriculum as well as resources for adults, starts with difficult conversations about the systems and biases that Sandberg said girls face.

“Who wants to say to a girl seven years before she enters the workforce, ‘One day you’re going to be in a meeting and some man is going to talk over you, voice something you just said and get credit for your ideas,'” Sandberg asked. “We don’t want to tell our daughters that."

But speaking about those biases, she said, then allows for a conversation about how to counteract them.

“We’re going to start telling you the challenges, but then we’re also going to equip you and the people around you to change them,” Sandberg said.

Many nonprofits and schools run programs that encourage girls to lead, particularly teenagers, who research shows may retreat from high-profile roles or limit their ambitions in response to social pressures. However, researchers caution against making broad generalizations about the experiences of all girls and say that