Review of Women, Work and Triumph
-
Callen Kwamboka
- Book of the Month Participant
- Posts: 6
- Joined: 30 May 2025, 00:28
- Currently Reading:
- Bookshelf Size: 0
- Reviewer Page: onlinebookclub.org/reviews/by-callen-kwamboka.html
Review of Women, Work and Triumph
[Following is a volunteer review of "Women, Work and Triumph" by Beverly Gandara.]
Sheryl Sandberg’s Women, Work, and the Will to Lead isn’t the kind of book you can just skim and shelve. It invites you—gently but insistently—into a conversation that feels both personal and public. From the opening chapters, where Sandberg shares her struggles with imposter syndrome while climbing the corporate ladder, to her accounts of missed opportunities that had less to do with ability and more to do with self-doubt or social conditioning, the book reads more like a candid letter from a high-powered friend than a prescriptive guide. It’s filled with moments where you think, yes, I’ve felt that too, and those moments linger. But, and this is something I kept coming back to as I read, it’s also steeped in a world that doesn’t exactly reflect most workplaces—especially if your office doesn’t sit in Silicon Valley or isn’t stocked with executive assistants.
What’s compelling, though, is how she makes you care. Sandberg writes like someone who has felt the stakes, and her willingness to be vulnerable—like when she talks about pumping breast milk between meetings or second-guessing herself in male-dominated boardrooms—makes her stories stick. I think that’s where the book’s power lies. It’s not just facts and figures (though there are those, too). It’s the way she tells you about hesitating to raise her hand in meetings and you realize, maybe you’ve done the same. The anecdotes do a lot of emotional heavy lifting. But I did sometimes wonder—who gets to “lean in” like this? If you’re in a retail job with no flexibility, or in a workplace where asking for more is met with suspicion or punishment, then Sandberg’s brand of empowerment might feel a bit... distant. Not wrong, necessarily. Just out of reach.
Still, I liked the book. I really did. I liked that she didn’t pretend the problem was just "out there" in boardrooms and HR policies. She asked women to examine themselves too—their fears, their habits, their own internalized ideas about leadership. That balance—of looking outward and inward—is tricky, and she mostly pulls it off. Her story about turning down a speaking gig because she felt unqualified, only to later realize a man with less experience had accepted it, felt so familiar I almost laughed out loud. Because who hasn’t been there?
What I didn’t love—and this is where I hesitate just a little—is how narrowly the world of the book is drawn. It’s a corporate world, filled with MBAs, maternity leave negotiations, and corner offices. That’s not the reality for most working women. I kept wanting more stories from outside the tech and finance bubble. More nurses, more teachers, more factory supervisors. I think the core ideas would still resonate, but they needed different voices to really land across a broader audience.
Still, even with that limitation, I’d give it a solid 5 out of 5 stars. Not because it’s perfect—it’s not—but because it does something that a lot of books in this genre don’t. It starts a real conversation. One you’ll keep thinking about after you’ve turned the last page. It makes you want to speak up more, second-guess yourself a little less, and maybe even take that risk you’ve been quietly avoiding. And if a book makes you do that, I’d say it’s done its job.
******
Women, Work and Triumph
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
Sheryl Sandberg’s Women, Work, and the Will to Lead isn’t the kind of book you can just skim and shelve. It invites you—gently but insistently—into a conversation that feels both personal and public. From the opening chapters, where Sandberg shares her struggles with imposter syndrome while climbing the corporate ladder, to her accounts of missed opportunities that had less to do with ability and more to do with self-doubt or social conditioning, the book reads more like a candid letter from a high-powered friend than a prescriptive guide. It’s filled with moments where you think, yes, I’ve felt that too, and those moments linger. But, and this is something I kept coming back to as I read, it’s also steeped in a world that doesn’t exactly reflect most workplaces—especially if your office doesn’t sit in Silicon Valley or isn’t stocked with executive assistants.
What’s compelling, though, is how she makes you care. Sandberg writes like someone who has felt the stakes, and her willingness to be vulnerable—like when she talks about pumping breast milk between meetings or second-guessing herself in male-dominated boardrooms—makes her stories stick. I think that’s where the book’s power lies. It’s not just facts and figures (though there are those, too). It’s the way she tells you about hesitating to raise her hand in meetings and you realize, maybe you’ve done the same. The anecdotes do a lot of emotional heavy lifting. But I did sometimes wonder—who gets to “lean in” like this? If you’re in a retail job with no flexibility, or in a workplace where asking for more is met with suspicion or punishment, then Sandberg’s brand of empowerment might feel a bit... distant. Not wrong, necessarily. Just out of reach.
Still, I liked the book. I really did. I liked that she didn’t pretend the problem was just "out there" in boardrooms and HR policies. She asked women to examine themselves too—their fears, their habits, their own internalized ideas about leadership. That balance—of looking outward and inward—is tricky, and she mostly pulls it off. Her story about turning down a speaking gig because she felt unqualified, only to later realize a man with less experience had accepted it, felt so familiar I almost laughed out loud. Because who hasn’t been there?
What I didn’t love—and this is where I hesitate just a little—is how narrowly the world of the book is drawn. It’s a corporate world, filled with MBAs, maternity leave negotiations, and corner offices. That’s not the reality for most working women. I kept wanting more stories from outside the tech and finance bubble. More nurses, more teachers, more factory supervisors. I think the core ideas would still resonate, but they needed different voices to really land across a broader audience.
Still, even with that limitation, I’d give it a solid 5 out of 5 stars. Not because it’s perfect—it’s not—but because it does something that a lot of books in this genre don’t. It starts a real conversation. One you’ll keep thinking about after you’ve turned the last page. It makes you want to speak up more, second-guess yourself a little less, and maybe even take that risk you’ve been quietly avoiding. And if a book makes you do that, I’d say it’s done its job.
******
Women, Work and Triumph
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
