In Sheryl Sandberg’s business-manual-cum-self-help-book Lean In, she recounts an anecdote about a meeting in New York. Pitching a deal, a senior figure suggested a break for refreshments. Sandberg asked where the women’s bathroom was, and none of the all-male office occupants knew. The tale is designed to show how few women had reached her position — but is far more revealing than that: plenty of women would surely work in the office, providing the coffee and sweeping the floors. But in Sandberg’s anecdote, they remain entirely invisible.

Lean In was remarkably successful, with accessible prose and promises of greater success for readers if they acted on Sandberg’s advice. But this form of feminism is entirely individual, with no blame apportioned for workplace disputes or the attitudes of the entirely male executives Sandberg dealt with. The problem, apparently, is that women hold themselves back. Women have a tendency to mentally check out of their workplace in the late stages of pregnancy, Sandberg opines; but she fails to mention that the United States has some of the weakest maternity leave rights in the world: in the forty-two countries that comprise the Organization of Economic Cooperation and Development, women are given an average of eighteen weeks of maternity pay. The US offers none.

Focusing on individual behavior as the sole source of success and failure lets structural sexism in the business world entirely off the hook. An individualist looking to get ahead will always rely on class interests and links with other successful colleagues rather than solidarity with colleagues of the same gender. The Sandberg image is carefully calibrated to appear nonthreatening, hard-working, and friendly: her goal is to help people, and she just happens to be a crucial cog in the biggest social media company in the world. That image has taken a battering in the last few weeks, with Facebook increasingly attacked for playing fast and lose with users’ data, and for accusations that the site has unduly influenced democratic elections and inflamed racial tensions that have led in some cases to extreme violence.