I am a most unlikely woman to be writing about Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s over-, and poorly-hyped new book “Lean In ” (more about what’s “poor ” about the hype in a moment). Most long-time friends will tell you I’ve been saying “You’re only as oppressed as you feel ” for longer than many of our readers have been on the planet. And those same long-time friends have rolled their eyes at what they’ve heard about this book because on the surface it sounds like Ms. Sandberg is exhorting women to do even more. It appears she’s yet another loud (and extremely rich!) voice proclaiming “You can have it all, ” while blissfully ignorant of real life, the “other 99% “. The pithiest comment from a colleague, “It’s tough to lean in when you just got back from a 4-week maternity leave after a C-section. ”

Well, that’s what’s poor about the hype. Ms. Sandberg has a good story to tell, but it’s gotten lost in the noise. If I were her, I’d get a new publicist. Her facts and figures are correct: women made some gains in the workforce in the 70’s and 80’s, but it all seems to have stalled out. Not a lot of CEOs, not a lot of senators, or governors. More women finish college than men, but it just doesn’t translate into rising to the top. It doesn’t even translate into tech careers. Gender somehow does hold us back. In retail, while we have some women in key positions (Andrea Jung, Vicki Cantrell, Lori Schafer, Lori Mitchell-Keller, Diane Randolph, Karen Lowe and many others I am likely leaving out), our management ranks are still overwhelmingly male. In fact, according to an article on refinery29.com, only 1.7% of CEO’s in the FASHION industry are women. Holy cow! That’s crazy. This isn’t heavy manufacturing. The audience is women, the buyers are women, but men are running the show. Whoa. And wait… only one in five of IT professionals are female.[1]

But Leaning In doesn’t mean “trying harder. ” And no one is asking for new quotas. What Ms. Sandberg is trying to do with her book and its accompanying website www.leanin.org (I’ll bet you hadn’t heard about that one), is just help women who haven’t yet found their voice move forward. Not the way men do: Ms. Sandberg points out that whether through prejudice, nature or nurture, most women just operate differently, and most need different tactics to succeed in what is still a man’s world.

I can vouch for that. Back in the late 80’s, when I was working as a consultant with SDI Industries introducing flat and hanging garment sortation systems to the Retail Supply Chain, I met a lot of Retail CEOs and COOs. All but one was male. I remember waiting to meet that female COO with great anticipation. I’m not going to tell you her name. I wanted to see how a female COO would handle herself. Surely it would be different. I was incredibly disappointed when I met her because it wasn’t different at all. She was acting much the way a man would in her role.

It wasn’t until the mid-1990’s, when I met Judy George, then CEO of Domain Home Fashions that I saw how a woman could “natively ” handle herself in an executive position. In fact, half the management team was women, and it was a fabulous experience. Judy believed I was something more than just her chief geek, and asked my opinion about product and all kinds of things related to the business. The late great Laura Katz (Chief Merchant) and I used to storyboard the quarterly “board of director stories ” for Judy (sidebar: my years creating these stories have given me a very strong BS meter for quarterly earnings calls. I know a tall tale when I hear one.). Our off-site strategy meetings were a thing to behold, where we mostly laughed ourselves to tears, and sometimes cried those same tears. I think it’s the most fun I’ve had until now – in a company where ironically again – half the management team is women.

As I read “Lean In “, I saw clearly that Ms. Sandberg wasn’t talking to me. Maybe I could have used this book 30 years ago, but I have “jungle gym’d ” (Ms. Sandberg coins this term as an alternative to “career path ” and I like the analogy) my way to the job of a lifetime. I’ll be a Managing Partner of RSR for the rest of my career, if the industry will have me. But maybe I can help as a voice from the other end of the journey.

Retail may mean jobs, but as Vicki Cantrell often says, it also means careers.

And it’s on us (women in retail) to help other women find their voice. We’re not all going to be lucky enough to have Larry Summers (former Secretary of the Treasury and Harvard Professor) as our first mentor, or Eric Schmidt take us under his wing at our first private sector job (or have that job be at Google, for that matter). But I’ve seen women walk out of a room after hearing Judy George speak feeling completely inspired. I myself have helped a couple find their way in their careers. Leaning In doesn’t mean trying to have it all, all at the same time. It really means bringing as much of yourself as you can into any given situation in your own unique way.

So ladies forty and under, read the book, don’t hate her because she was so privileged, and see what’s relevant to you. Ladies forty and over, find someone to mentor. Or lead by example. Let your voice be heard. We’re the Veterans here. That’s something I can lean into. Retail should mean jobs for those we want to sell our stuff to, don’t you think?

[1] A Question of Gender, I-cio.com, July 2010