The Independent Women’s Forum has published a new anthology of essays titled Lean Together: An Agenda for Smarter Government, Stronger Communities, and More Opportunity for Women.  To quote from a summary available on the website: “Lean Together presents a better vision for America: Smaller government, stronger communities, a vibrant economy, and more opportunity for women and men alike. It covers a wide range of issues from childcare and early childhood education, to the workplace, food and agriculture policy, health care, poverty, technology, and more.

LEAN TOGETHER puts forth a positive agenda in which republican ideals of limited government, virtue, and self-improvement are re-imagined.  It offers concrete policy solutions to challenges that face our country and especially women and their families that will rein in the progressive state, streamline government, and strengthen our economy.”

At a moment at which Republican, conservative, or libertarian-leaning politicians are often carelessly accused of waging a “War on Women,” the message that free market policies are good for women is an extremely important one. Lean Together does an excellent job  summarizing the case for the benefits of free markets and limited government for women. The debunking of misleading statistics about the gender wage gap and discussion of how this gap results more from individual choices than from bias or discrimination is particularly useful. Although much of the content of the book may not necessarily seem revolutionary to professional policy wonks, it is an admirably comprehensive survey of conservative and libertarian thinking on domestic policy and gender. I wish I had had a resource like this one when I was a college student or intern just starting to learn about the power of these ideas.

That said, the book is not perfect. One, I am not a fan of the title, which I fear may potentially undermine the book’s effectiveness. It is hard to avoid wondering if Lean Together is meant to play off the title of Facebook COO’s Sheryl Sandberg’s best-selling Lean In,  a combined memoir and self-help book that was the ship that launched a thousand op-eds about feminism last year. When I first saw ads for  Lean Together,  I  questioned whether if it was intended to be an anti-matter version of Lean In. But as far as I can tell, it isn’t. Lean Together is a  policy tome, whereas Lean In is about how women should modify their individual behavior to be more successful at work (indeed, some feminists have criticized Sandberg for focusing too much on what women could ourselves do differently and not enough on what government should do to help women.)  Positioning Lean Together as the anti-Lean In may unfortunately reinforce the unfair stereotype that libertarian and conservative feminists necessarily oppose the ambitions of women like Sandberg.  I do not, and from what I can tell, the contributors don’t either.  I would therefore have preferred something like Please Stop Helping Us as a more accurate summary of the book’s contents, although admittedly another interesting recent book happens to bear that title (one about which I hope to have some thoughts up very soon.)

 Lean Together is most successful as a primer on domestic economic policy, but somewhat less successful in taking on cultural questions.  Eleven of its twelve chapters are essentially devoted to answering questions beginning with “What should government do?”, such as “What should government do about health care?” or “What should government do about corporate income marginal tax rates?” In the twelfth and final chapter, there is an abrupt switch to a discussion about “Restoring American Culture and the Family,” which suddenly delves into questions beginning with “What should individuals do about X?” or “What should civil society institutions do about Y?” The relationship between culture and politics is a complex one, and Lean Together bites off a bit more than it can chew by devoting just a single chapter to it near the end of the book.

Finally, there are some important examples of ways in which liberal or progressive public policies have backfired against women’s interests that are not covered here and that perhaps should have been. The Department of Education’s interpretation of Title IX, which bans sex discrimination in federally funded educational institutions, leads some such institutions to channel funds into sports that women don’t want to play and away from extracurricular and academic activities that female students would prefer instead. There is also some evidence that this mis-interpretation of Title IX in the athletic context has led to sex discrimination against women in college admissions. Over-broad interpretations of federal sexual harassment law may lead some male bosses and professors to fear mentoring talented young women. And largely unfounded moral panic over “rape culture” on college campuses and sexual assault in the military may lead some women to forego challenging educational or career opportunities.

UPDATE: I edited this post (Sunday night, 9/7) to fix a syntax error.