Female COO Thinks More Girls Aspire to Be Like Her Thanks to Sandberg

Leslie Bradshaw, chief operating officer at Guide, a text-to-video startup, believes more young women think it’s possible to be a CEO or COO these days because of the [Sheryl] “Sandberg Effect.”

From a NPR op-ed:

In some ways, the rise of the female COO could be solidifying the modern female office archetype, replacing the show-running executive assistant (or secretary) who may sit outside the office but knows the details of everything going on inside because she orchestrated it. At face value, a powerful foil to the male CEO rock star is good visibility for female executives, but it could also be a dangerous extension of the hackneyed suggestion that “behind every great man stands a great woman.”

Tech CEOs “are the rock stars of this business generation,” she writes. Exactly: they’re wealthy and privileged, even if they’ve worked hard to get where they are. Women make up around half of the national workforce, but about 60 percent of the minimum-wage workforce and 73 percent of tipped workers. It’s awesome that more young women think they’re qualified to be CEO/COO, but real progress means better policies for the majority of women, not just rock stars.