Yesterday, Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg launched a new campaign on her site LeanIn.org with a video featuring a crew of talented women including Lena Dunham, Serena Williams, and Emma Watson speaking about their female support systems. The organization aims to connect and encourage women to work together, and the new campaign is fittingly called Together Women Can. The video kicks off with the line, “Behind every successful woman is another successful woman,” setting fire to the antiquated notion that a woman continues to stand “behind every successful man.”
The PSA shows Dunham, Williams, Watson, Kerry Washington, Selena Gomez, Megyn Kelly, Eva Longoria, and Abby Wambach recounting stories of the women who have inspired them, helped them, and pushed them to get to where they are now. For actors like Emma Watson and Kerry Washington, those people are their influential directors, namely Sofia Coppola and Shonda Rhimes. Washington describes how Rhimes “has so much power but she wields it so compassionately and responsibly,” while Watson says of Coppola, “she reallys supported my work and she made me believe that I could do more.” For Lena Dunham, that person is co-showrunner of Girls Jenni Konner. And for Serena, of course, it’s Venus.
The speakers’ heartfelt tributes are a moving reminder of how supportive women can and should be to one another in their work and in life. Megyn Kelly, for example, reveals, “One of the most heartwarming parts of this past year for me has been the outpouring of support I have received from women.” Dunham elaborates that “the idea that another woman was in some way taking what belonged to you — that whole idea is kind of shifting.”
Be prepared to immediately send your work BFF a random appreciation text.
Credits
Text Blair Cannon