Controversy over Sheryl Sandberg's "Lean In" movement drew a large crowd of mostly young, professional women from the D.C. area on Thursday.
"We're not going to have a catfight" tonight, the Washington Post's "On Faith" editor, Sally Quinn, announced at the start of the Independent Women's Forum event, though it quickly became clear there would be no consensus regarding Sandberg's advice to women, either, on a panel that also included the Atlantic senior editor Hanna Rosin, the New Atlantis senior editor Christine Rosen, and IWF Executive Director Sabrina Schaeffer.
Schaeffer, who noted she was surprised Sandberg — who offered similar advice to women in speeches long before publishing her book — never created a "unifying moment" for feminists, speculated on the nature of the controversy itself: "There has been a shift; at one time she would have been the paragon of the feminist ideal and now she is maybe the center of feminist frustration."