I'm not telling women to be like men. I'm telling us to evaluate

The words of Sheryl Sandberg — “I’m not telling women to be like men. I’m telling us to evaluate what men and women do in the workforce and at home without the gender bias.” — resound with the clarity of ancient truth, though spoken in modern times. Beneath her calm reasoning lies a fire — the call for balance, justice, and the awakening of true equality. Her words are not a battle cry for imitation, but for understanding. She does not seek to erase the differences between men and women, but to reveal the bias that distorts how those differences are valued. In her voice echoes the wisdom of the ancients who once said: “Justice is giving each their due — nothing more, nothing less.”

To “evaluate without gender bias” is to look upon humanity with clear eyes — to see the worker, the parent, the leader, not through the clouded lens of expectation, but through the light of worth. For centuries, the world has been divided not only by strength and skill, but by perception. The labor of men has often been exalted, while the quiet endurance of women — in the home, in care, in emotional wisdom — has been made invisible. Sandberg’s call is not to invert this imbalance, but to restore harmony. She reminds us that equality is not sameness; it is the freedom to live and labor without the shadow of prejudice.

Her message finds its origin in the long struggle for recognition — not only for women, but for every soul who has been diminished by stereotype. In ancient Athens, the philosopher Plato once wrote in The Republic that the ideal city should allow women to rule as well as men, for virtue and wisdom are not bound by gender. Yet his vision was cast aside by the customs of his age. So too, in every era since, the world has built systems where roles were defined not by ability, but by assumption. Sheryl Sandberg, speaking from the heart of the modern workplace, revives that forgotten idea — that merit, not gender, should guide our measure of value.

Consider the story of Hypatia of Alexandria, the philosopher and mathematician of the ancient world. In an age when women were expected to remain silent, she taught scholars and statesmen alike, guiding minds with clarity and reason. Yet history remembers that her brilliance was both her triumph and her peril. She was slain by those who could not accept her defiance of gendered expectation. Her fate reminds us how deeply the roots of bias can wound the human spirit — how much wisdom has been lost because society could not yet see beyond the veil of its own prejudice. Sandberg’s words, in this light, are not just corporate philosophy; they are the continuation of Hypatia’s courage — a vow that the next generation shall not be silenced by the same blindness.

To reject gender bias is not only to change policy; it is to change perception. It demands that we unlearn centuries of quiet conditioning — to question why we praise decisiveness in a man but call it aggression in a woman; why we honor sacrifice in mothers but overlook it in fathers; why leadership is imagined with one face and not the other. Sandberg’s wisdom is that equality begins not in laws or offices, but in the mind — in the willingness to see anew. As the ancient Chinese sage Lao Tzu once taught, “To see things as they are is wisdom; to see them as they should be is vision.” Her words embody both.

And yet, there is gentleness in her vision — a recognition that the path to fairness is not war, but understanding. “I’m not telling women to be like men,” she says, and in this we hear compassion. For she honors the essence of both — the masculine and feminine, the assertive and the nurturing — and calls us to celebrate the balance between them. Her message is not to erase difference, but to value difference rightly, without the distortions of hierarchy or fear. In doing so, she speaks to the harmony the ancients revered — the yin and yang, the balance of opposites that gives birth to strength.

The lesson in her words is this: equality is not achieved by imitation, but by recognition. The world does not need women to become men, nor men to abandon themselves. What the world needs is vision — the courage to see that dignity has no gender. Each of us must learn to measure worth by character, skill, and contribution, not by the shape of the hand that offers it. Let us begin, then, in our own lives: to listen more deeply, to challenge old assumptions, to speak when silence perpetuates injustice.

For in the end, as Sheryl Sandberg reminds us, the true power of humanity lies not in division but in understanding — in the awakening of hearts and minds to the truth that all work, whether done in the boardroom or the home, whether performed by man or woman, bears the same sacred worth. When we see clearly at last, the ancient balance will be restored — and humanity, whole and united, will rise higher than ever before.