Lean In’s co-founders want to see more women leaders. They’re hoping a new program aimed at girls and young teens can help.
Women remain underrepresented in corporate leadership positions, with a 2022 report from the women’s empowerment nonprofit Lean In and consulting firm McKinsey & Company finding that while women make up 48% of entry-level jobs, they fill just 26% of c-suite roles. A separate USA TODAY analysis found women are outnumbered 5 to 1 in senior leadership roles among the nation’s 100 top publicly traded companies.
Lean In, co-founded by CEO Rachel Thomas and former Meta Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg in 2013, is working to help change those statistics through Lean In Girls. The new leadership program, which launched Thursday, offers a free curriculum of 15 one-hour group sessions that teach girls and young teens who identify with the girlhood experience how to view themselves as leaders.
A decade after Lean In’s launch, “we’re just not making progress quickly enough. We really need to start earlier,” Thomas said. “We think women and girls are the leaders the world needs, and we think a program like this is more likely to get girls on the path to leadership.”
How does Lean In Girls work?
Thomas said the program is focused on teaching girls ages 11 to 15 to “embrace their superpowers” and reject stereotypes about what girls can’t do. The program is also a call to action to remove the obstacles in girls’ way and encourage them to lead.
Some research shows that young girls struggle to view themselves as leaders, with just 21% of girls saying they believe they have the qualities required to be a good leader, according to a 2008 report from the Girl Scouts Research Institute.
“We really want to equip girls to lead on their own terms. And we really want the world to clear a path for them to lead,” Thomas said. “This is a program for girls to help them avoid a lot of the pitfalls that we women fall into.”
Lean In Girls’ curriculum was developed in collaboration with experts, including Stanford scholars, and is rooted in ethnographic and social science research.
“Lean In as a foundation, we are deep experts on female leadership and gender bias and stereotypes, but we’re not girl experts,” Sandberg said. “So we brought in girl experts and really paid a lot of attention to inclusive leadership and to diversity.”
The curriculum is split into four parts that can be used separately or mixed and matched, and discussion prompts can be tailored to fit each class.
“Our goal is to really tell girls that they can lead, and tell all the people around them to encourage them. But really to bring a new form of leadership that is so attractive to girls right to the forefront,” Sandberg said.
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Who can use Lean In Girls’ curriculum?
The first half of the curriculum is available for free on Lean In’s website starting Thursday. The second half is available to Lean In’s more than 1,400 corporate and nonprofit partner organizations.
“We’re just not really satisfied with the leadership we see in the world right now. We’ve been pounding our chest about the power of women as leaders,” Thomas said. “The more that we can do to lift them up and inspire them to lead, the better.”
Lean In Girls’ launch follows a pilot program with about 350 participants so far through KIPP Public Charter Schools, Girls Inc., and Girl Scouts of Northeast Texas.
Surveys from the pilot found 100% of facilitators would recommend the program. Ninety-one percent of girls said they learned something new about how they can lead, and 94% said they would recommend the program to a friend.
“So far it’s mostly been tested in middle schools and community programs and the after-school programs and that’s where we think it will travel,” Thomas said. “Our hope is that lots of schools, lots of afterschool programs, lots of athletic programs are using the program, whether that’s pieces of it that really resonate with them or build on existing programming or the whole darn thing.”
