Anecdotal evidence - even when its source is the omnipresent corporate female super-hero Sheryl Sandberg – will routinely take us to the dead end where stereotypes thrive.

Sandberg is famous for urging women to do better, be better, work smarter and stay in the game. She’s promoting her new book on the gender gap, once again suggesting that, corporate obstacles aside, we’re just not bold enough.

“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in,” Nicholas Kristof wrote on Sunday in She’s (Rarely) the Boss, quoting Sandberg’s Lean In,

"Yes, let’s encourage young women to ‘lean in,’ he writes, “but let’s also change the workplace so that when they do lean in and assert themselves, we’re directly behind them shouting: “Right!”

Whenever women’s failure to fulfill our leadership potential is blamed on women (too cautious, not sufficiently assertive, too easily moved to give up) I’m reminded of Chris Rock’s riff on the dentist who lives on his street. It goes like this.

[My only three black neighbors are] Mary J. Blige, one of the greatest singers of all time, Denzel Washington, one of the greatest actors of all time, and Jay-Z, one of the greatest rappers of all time.” His white neighbor? “A dentist. And he isn’t like the greatest dentist in history either. I had to host the Oscars to get that house — a black dentist in my neighborhood would have to invent teeth.

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