Sheryl Sandberg is pushing back on the increasingly popular (if much debated) trend of "tradwives"
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The label, short for traditional wives, emphasizes a homemaking lifestyle based around motherhood and domestic activities like cooking
"We need to be realistic and we need to not use new ideas to reinforce what are old, outdated and very, very, very sexist notions of what roles are," the Lean In author and former CEO tells PEOPLE
Sheryl Sandbergwould like to say a few things about tradwives.
The former Meta CEO andLean Inauthor — who runsa similarly named groupas part of her family foundation — has long been a vocal advocate for women to push for more opportunities in the workplace.
In an interview with PEOPLE, Sandberg, 56, is pushing back on the increasingly popular (if much debated) trend.
The label, short for traditional wives, emphasizes a homemaking lifestyle based around motherhood and domestic activities like cooking.
Someinfluencers, like Alexia Delarosa and Estee Williams, have attracted massive followings online (though Williams said last yearshe was stepping awayfrom the niche). Others, like Ballerina Farm's Hannah Neeleman, don't embrace the label itself but post similar content.
Sandberg finds the tradwife talk reductive for women both as parents and professionals.
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"The message that is going out is that in order to be a good wife or a good mother, you need to do it full time," she says. "And the truth is that that is a decision almost no women can afford to make."
She continues: "If you look at the percentages of women who need to work outside of the home to support their families, it's the great majority of women. And so these messages that 'this is how you have a successful marriage, that this is how you have six children,' I think, are very detrimental to women."
And while "I don't think they are meant that way ... there are so many messages that tell women what their place is that limit their ambition," Sandberg says, "and this is potentially, inadvertently, one of them."
A better message is a simpler one, she says: Women should choose how they want to spend their lives.
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"If you have the resources and you want to be a tradwife, that's great," she tells PEOPLE. "That's for you to decide."
At the same time, she says, "We need to be realistic and we need to not use new ideas to reinforce what are old, outdated and very, very, very sexist notions of what roles are."
Sandberg also worries that phrases like "tradwife" make women who can't or won't assume that role feel guilty.
"Let's be clear: You are not harming your marriage and you are not harming your children by working and by being ambitious," she says.
Sandberg has been busy herself. As an advocate, she is focused onending child marriage— an issue she says is critical to human rights — and she funded areportreleased this month on the tolls of the practice.
Produced by the Institute of Global Politics Women's Initiative at Columbia University's School of International and Public Affairs, the report tallied the worldwide casualties and economic costs of minors being married off.
According to the report, child marriage causes between 100,000 and 190,000 deaths of children under age 5 annually and is associated with up to 14,000 maternal deaths a year. Up to $175 billion each year is also lost in the global economy, according to the report.
Amid increasing outcry and scrutiny, however, child marriage is increasingly uncommon.
The number of women around the world who were married before age 18 has decreased from one in four in 1997 to nearly one in five in 2022, according to the report. The decrease has been attributed to such factors as increases in girls' education, less poverty and tougher laws.
"We're at a moment where international cooperation is breaking down," Sandberg says. "We are not working on issues, and so much is controversial and polarized. But I don't think this is. I think this is super clear: Child marriage should not be allowed to happen anywhere in the world."
Read the original article onPeople
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