Declaration of interest

Editor—Thank you for giving us the opportunity to respond to the letter from Dr Ward—we thank him for his comments. While we applaud the messages in the most recent Davies report to which Dr Ward refers, his reference to Sheryl Sandberg’s new book, Lean in: Women, work and the will to lead deserves further discussion. In our editorial, we referred to Sheryl Sandberg’s TED Talk from 2010 where she described how women must take some ownership for (unintentionally) holding themselves back when it came to their careers. This talk, which has been viewed more than 2 million times, encouragedwomento ‘sitat thetable’—inotherwords,put themselves forward. The book goes a bit further and gives the feeling that somehow Sheryl is putting the blame on women’s own shoulders just a little more than we find comfortable. We commend Sheryl Sandberg for all she is doing for women. But this book has its issues. A quick look at the multitude of book reviews will reveal that we are not the only people who feel uneasy about her message. Although this book is billed as giving practical advice on how to mix professional accomplishments with more personal goals, it is not really like that. The anecdotes are a bit cheesy and the whole book is superficial and is targeted almost exclusively at women with a partner and children. The anecdotes ARE funny but then a comedy writer wrote it—not Sheryl. It was actually written by a ghost-writer, Nell Scovell, who incidentally, wrote ‘Sabrina the Teenage Witch’ and other TV screenplays. We suggest that perhaps this book should be just part of the conversation about women. Read the Davies report to which Dr Ward refers—it has well-thought-out strategies which can be applied to Boards whether professionalorbusiness based.Women canhelpthemselves too of course, but actually everyone can make a difference. The Lean in book has a lot of Sheryl Sandberg’s own experiences in it, but it has little of her soul. Perhaps it would have struck a better note if she had actually written it herself.