Do Sheryl Sandberg  and Christine Lagarde represent women?

Dawn Foster: Will young women be convinced that the freedom they’ve inherited is part of the natural state of affairs and not the temporary outcome of a long battle that is still being waged, and in which everything could suddenly be lost”.

Anyone familiar with abortion rights campaigns, for example, knows this to be true. Reproductive freedoms have been hard won in many countries, but millions of women worldwide are still denied the right to abortion, and religious groups are committed to chipping away at reproductive rights across the globe.

Women’s rights are precarious. It’s not simply a question of marching towards a more equal future: we have to keep an eye on the past too. For every battle won, there remain people who will happily reverse those decisions and cast women back decades in terms of social progress. This is the problem with using individual women’s successes as bellwethers of feminist progress. Sheryl Sandberg (COO of Facebook), Marissa Mayer (CEO of Yahoo!) and Christine Lagarde (managing director of the International Monetary Fund) may talk about women’s equality, and proffer their own positions as proof of progress – but post-crash, many women feel their lives are measurably worse.y.

It’s all well and good to encourage women in business to speak up more in meetings, but most women don’t – and will never – work in managerial roles. And for them, being told women must be the architects of their own fortune won’t wash. A broader understanding of how inequality is perpetuated, and how the economy disadvantages women, can yield policy that is fairer to women.  Representative Women