Adrees Latif / Reuters

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer of Facebook, speaks during an interview in New York.

“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and men ran half our homes,” writes Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg in her book, "Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead," a self-named “manifesto” for her proposed women’s revolution.  

As appealing as such a world may sound, some working women argue that it’s easier said than done. 

Nonsense, Sandberg says. Too many women are being overlooked for promotions due to lack of confidence and poor negotiation skills, not lack of opportunity. It has become the norm for women to sidestep advancement in order to focus on family responsibilities, she writes, and the result is a shocking imbalance of power on the workforce. 

Women still only hold 4 percent of top government posts worldwide, 14 percent of top corporate jobs and 17 percent of board seats, and those numbers haven’t budged over the past decade. With a skilled, college-educated female army out there, there is no reason men are still holding the keys the kingdom. 

But any "revolution" is bound to draw its fair share of criticism, and this one is no exception. Sandberg, a Harvard-educated, über-power player and Facebook’s COO, is often derided for being out of touch with the challenges and frustrations of ordinary working women. Sandberg’s supporters counter, who better to lead a revolution? – and point out that she has been able to create a meaningful dialogue about the driving forces that define most women’s lives – a conversation that has not taken place on a national scale for quite a long time. 

“It’s hard to talk about women leaving the workforce without sounding like you’re criticizing the choices they’ve made. But by definition, if women aren’t out there making the laws, running the corporations, doing the research – if women aren’t engaged in professional life, they’re not having an impact,” says Kim Grahl, a physician and senior clinical educator at North Shore University Health System in Evanston, Ill.  “So how can you blame it on men when women have taken themselves out of the game?” 

Grahl, a mother of two, has kept her place in the workforce while raising her children. But she’s the first to admit that she has allowed her career to take a backseat to her husband’s. “I have a much less interesting career than my husband has. So yes, women are making our own choices but the problem is, sometimes we’re not given very good choices.” 

The fallacy, she says, shared by many women of her generation, was that it was possible to take time off to raise children and then jump back into the game. 

“It’s like we were sold a bill of goods,” she says. “Jobs demand too much. It would be good if you could take 15 percent of your time to devote to family life – but this is a fantasy, right? The sheer volume of menial work that a mother has, I mean, you’re just exhausted. And then, all of a sudden you wake up and you’re 46.  And the train has gone by. And when it went by, you were in the basement doing laundry.” 

Suzanne Keller, an attorney at The Rachel Coalition, a nonprofit women’s organization in New Jersey, agrees that managing two high-powered careers along with a family can be next to impossible. 

“It’s very hard to accept that I was on a trajectory to be higher in my field than I am,” says Keller, a Harvard Law School graduate whose husband is the director of two Health and Human Rights programs at New York University. “I’m not out there in the way that I could have been if my husband’s job wasn’t so demanding. It’s very hard for two people have big careers.  It’s an incredible strain on a family.” 

Julie Martin, an attorney at Scott, Scriven and Wahoff, LLP in Columbus, Ohio, says she was able to “lean in” and make partner at her law firm because her husband was willing to “lean out.” 

“How I did it was by having a great spouse who took on 50 percent or more of the home responsibility,” she acknowledges. “My husband is a high school English teacher, so he’s home with the kids every summer and shares their schedule. He works the structured hours so I can work the crazy hours.” 

In fact, while most working women acknowledge the importance of a helpful partner, many said the single most important factor in successfully “leaning in” is a supportive employer.  For Laura Griffin, publications editor at Montclair State University in New Jersey, an understanding boss made it possible for her return to her job at a prominent Dallas newspaper after her first child was born.  

“My boss made it easy for me to come back from maternity leave,” she says. “He gave me a sizable raise before I left, let me come back at 30 hours a week and made sure I still had worthwhile assignments. He knew that I needed a compelling reason to 'lean in' to my job when I had the tug of a baby at home.” 

Martin concurs that a family-friendly employer can make the difference between a working mom and a stay-at-home mom. 

“I was fortunate to have an employer who allowed me to work flexible hours,” she says. “It was a flex-time thing, no questions asked: an exchange of office hours for family time.” 

“We don’t live in a culture where anyone can 'lean into' the home and not expect to take a hit on their career,” Keller says. “Sheryl Sandberg’s telling people to lean in or lean out when she should be talking about the culture of business. For instance, why is Yahoo taking away telecommuting? That’s been something that’s been really helpful to women.” 

Mwezi Pugh, a sixth-grade literacy teacher in the New York City public school system, says the work environment at many large corporations, particularly within the competitive financial sector, tends to be female unfriendly. 

“Before I became a teacher I worked for Morgan Stanley, and I could see that my female boss had to work twice as hard as the men in that male-dominated industry,” she says. “I feel like there’s still an 'old boys network' at those places. Men are given extended opportunities to socialize and work their way up, such as going for drinks at a bar or going to a game.  Women are less likely to be asked along in those situations. And even if they went, they’d be the only woman there.” 

Because the balance of work and family can be so fragile, many women say a difficult boss or a hostile work environment can be enough to derail her career -- or at least change the course of it. 

“When I was pregnant with my second child, I got a new boss who resented my maternity leave and my shorter work week,” recalls Griffin of her days at the newspaper.  “She gave me assignments no one else wanted to work on.  It wasn't long before I decided that giving up my time with my children for that job wasn't worth it.” 

Griffin eventually moved to the East Coast and later, found work as an editor.  

“If I had leaned into my job when my kids were little, I have no doubt I'd now be at a very different place in my career,” she says.  “But I think I would have missed a lot, too.  No matter what you do as a woman, it seems you feel guilty.  So I guess I leaned in toward my kids.”

Jing Wang Herman has plenty of experience as the lone female in the office. Currently the CEO for the USA operations of GetTaxi.com, Wang Herman previously racked up eight years on Wall Street, landed on a Forbes 30 Under 30 list - and earned her taxi driver’s license.

“I’m always in male-dominated environments. I don’t even realize it anymore,” she said.

As she climbed the corporate ladder, her mentors have been men, a fact of little consequence, said Wang Herman, whose tech company makes an app to hail and pay taxis. “To me, mentoring is gender neutral.”

Some might wonder if she’s a Queen Bee, a powerful, conniving woman who undermines competing females.

The answer is no, according to the co-authors of the 1974 study that coined the term “Queen Bee,” which they said has mutated into an outdated, sexist and negative stereotype.

As more women rise in the ranks of business, research indicates they are doing more mentoring, especially of other women. And while some say there is a difference between male and female mentoring styles, many like Wang Herman say it doesn’t matter.

“There were few women in senior positions at JP Morgan and Bear Stearns,” and she wasn’t mentored by any of them, Wang Herman said. “But I never felt undermined. They had to fight very hard to get where they are. It was gender neutral.”

Yet the Queen Bee syndrome still gets a lot of press.

The Wall Street Journal was the latest publication to misuse the Queen Bee term, the researchers said. “I was really surprised and frankly kind of appalled by it,” said Carol Tavris, a social psychologist who was a co-author of the original study for Psychology Today with Graham Staines and Toby Jayaratne.

“I think people misunderstood our term” said Jayaratne, who is now a research psychologist in the School of Public Health at the University of Michigan. “What they missed was the political climate and the sexist climate that created it. We wanted to focus on the atmosphere that created it.”

The term no longer means what it once did. “I hate it,” Tavris said.

“There is never any ‘King Rat’ syndrome,” Tavris said. “An angry man is an angry man, but an angry woman is a bitch.”

Queen Bees do exist but they are rare, said Jayaratne and Tavris.

“For every Queen Bee, there are a thousand women mentoring women,” Tavris said.

“The stereotype of the Queen Bee has gotten out of control, and it is no good.” Jayaratne said. “Most women do support other women and they do mentor.”

These days, women are more likely to be mentors than “Mean Girl”-type Queen Bees, according to a study published in June by Catalyst, a research and advisory group that seeks to improve workplaces by advancing more women into leadership roles.  The study concluded that 65 percent of women who received career development support in turn worked to develop new talent, while only 56 percent of men did the same.

“Not all women are developing women, but neither are all men. The main difference? When men don’t, it doesn’t reflect poorly on their gender. But when women don’t, it becomes an indictment of ALL women,” Catalyst CEO Ilene Lang wrote when the research was published.

Donna Bookout-Coe, the first woman president of the California Tow Truck Association, said she once experienced the wrath of a Queen Bee, but it was while she was in her 30s running the typing pool of a law firm. There was one secretary who basically appointed herself office manager, Bookout-Coe said. “She was considered the Queen Bee. Everyone was afraid of her.” That happened in the early 1970s, around the time of the original Queen Bee study.

Bookout-Coe left the law firm in 1977 and started her own tow truck company, where she occasionally encountered more traditional types of sexism, she said. In those days, there was only one other female tow truck company owner in the state, who Bookout-Coe credits as a mentor.  “I have been sought out by a lot of other women in the industry for advice,” Bookout-Coe said. “The more of us who are out there, the stronger we get.”

Catherine Connors, editor in chief of Disney Interactive Family, said most of her mentors were men because she started her career in academia focusing on political philosophy.  Mentoring in her current job is a more of a “collegially supportive relationship” with the employees, who are mostly women.

Connors was asked if all women in power should be obligated, even more so than men, to mentor other women. “I would be critical of someone who didn’t support other women,” Connors said. But she was quick to point out there is a range of ways women can mentor, including one-one-one guidance to two or three junior employees. However, “I don’t think everyone’s cut out for that,” she said. 

Sometimes it’s enough just to be a good role model, Connors said. “We don’t have enough role models,” she said.