We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women's voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.
— Sheryl Sandberg
There are really good reasons to leave the workforce or work less or take a different job when you want to be with your children. I just want women - and men - to make that choice once they have the child. Not years in advance, because... they don't get the right opportunities. They give up before they even start.
Women don't take enough risks. Men are just 'foot on the gas pedal.' We're not going to close the achievement gap until we close the ambition gap.
I tell people in their careers, 'Look for growth. Look for the teams that are growing quickly. Look for the companies that are doing well. Look for a place where you feel that you can have a lot of impact.'
I would love to meet J.K. Rowling and tell her how much I admire her writing and am amazed by her imagination. I read every 'Harry Potter' book as it came out and looked forward to each new one. I am rereading them now with my kids and enjoying them every bit as much. She made me look at jelly beans in a whole new way.
I absolutely loved Tina Fey's 'Bossypants' and didn't want it to end. It's hilarious as well as important. Not only did I laugh on every page, but I was nodding along, highlighting and dog-earing like crazy.
We can each define ambition and progress for ourselves. The goal is to work toward a world where expectations are not set by the stereotypes that hold us back, but by our personal passion, talents and interests.
It's more pressure on women to - if they marry or partner with someone, to partner with the right person. Because you cannot have a full career and a full life at home with your children if you are also doing all of the housework and child care.
Women are not making it to the top of any profession in the world. But when I say, 'The blunt truth is that men run the world,' people say, 'Really?' That, to me, is the problem.
When I was in high school, I was voted most likely to succeed.
Success, for me, is that if my son chooses to be a stay-at-home parent, he is cheered on for that decision. And if my daughter chooses to work outside the home and is successful, she's cheered on and supported.
We call our little girls bossy. Go to a playground; little girls get called bossy all the time - a word that's almost never used for boys - and that leads directly to the problems women face in the workforce.
What I tell everyone, and I really do for myself is, I have a long-run dream, which is I want to work on stuff that I think matters.
I want to tell any young girl out there who's a geek, I was a really serious geek in high school. It works out. Study harder.
We've got to get women to sit at the table.
The No. 1 impediment to women succeeding in the workforce is now in the home.
Women are not making it to the top. A hundred and ninety heads of state; nine are women. Of all the people in parliament in the world, thirteen per cent are women. In the corporate sector, women at the top - C-level jobs, board seats - tops out at fifteen, sixteen per cent.
When my mother took her turn to sit in a gown at her graduation, she thought she only had two career options: nursing and teaching. She raised me and my sister to believe that we could do anything, and we believed her.
I don't believe we have a professional self from Mondays through Fridays and a real self for the rest of the time.
I want women to get paid more. I want to teach them to negotiate so they get paid more.
I'm not pretending I can give advice to every single person or every single couple for every situation; I'm making the point that we are not going to get to equality in the workforce before we get to equality in the home. Not going to happen.
At Facebook, we try to be a strengths-based organization, which means we try to make jobs fit around people rather than make people fit around jobs. We focus on what people's natural strengths are and spend our management time trying to find ways for them to use those strengths every day.
Pages on Facebook are allowed to be anonymous. That is really important. People start revolutions; we need anonymity.
My hope in writing 'Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead' was to change the conversation from what women can't do to what we can.
Women attribute their success to working hard, luck, and help from other people. Men will attribute that - whatever success they have, that same success - to their own core skills.
If more women are in leadership roles, we'll stop assuming they shouldn't be.
What works for men does not always work for women, because success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. That's what the research shows. As a man gets more successful, everyone is rooting for him. As a woman gets more successful, both men and women like her less.
I don't hold myself out as a role model. I don't believe that everyone should make the same choices; that everyone has to want to be a CEO, or everyone should want to be a work-at-home mother. I want everyone to be able to choose. But I want us to be able to choose unencumbered by gender choosing for us.
In fact, my New Year's resolution every year, and I'm Jewish so I get two New Years a year, is to meditate, and I fail every time.
And what I saw happening is that women don't make one decision to leave the workforce. They makes lots of little decisions really far in advance that kind of inevitably lead them there.
So there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance.
I wish I could just go tell all the young women I work with, all these fabulous women, 'Believe in yourself and negotiate for yourself. Own your own success.' I wish I could tell that to my daughter. But it's not that simple.
Most people assume that women are responsible for households and child care. Most couples operate that way - not all. That fundamental assumption holds women back.
For any of us in this room today, let's start out by admitting we're lucky. We don't live in the world our mothers lived in, our grandmothers lived in, where career choices for women were so limited.
I spent most of my career in business not saying the word 'woman.' Because if you say the word 'woman' in a business context, and often in a political context, the person on the other side of the table thinks you're about to sue them or ask for special treatment, right?
I'm a pragmatist. I think, as a woman, you have to be more careful. You have to be more communal, you have to say yes to more things than men, you have to worry about things that men don't have to worry about. But once we get enough women into leadership, we can break stereotypes down. If you lead, you get to decide.
I believe if we had half our companies and half our countries run by women, and half our homes run by men, things would be better. We know our companies would be more productive. If you use the full talents of the population, you're more productive. We know our homes would be happier.
I really don't have any plan to leave Facebook. I put it so many times on the record, and I just don't get what to do to say it as clear as possible: I'm staying in Facebook; I really love my job.
I probably shouldn't admit this since I work in the tech industry, but I still prefer reading paper books.
I look forward to the day when half our homes are run by men and half our companies and institutions are run by women. When that happens, it won't just mean happier women and families; it will mean more successful businesses and better lives for us all.
It turns out that a husband who does the laundry, it's very romantic when you're older. And it's hard to believe when you're younger. But it's absolutely true.
I'd like to see where boys and girls end up if they get equal encouragement - I think we might have some differences in how leadership is done.
Women have made tons of progress. But we still have a small percentage of the top jobs in any industry, in any nation in the world. I think that's partly because from a very young age, we encourage our boys to lead and we call our girls bossy.
When I went to college, as much as my parents emphasized academic achievement, they emphasized marriage even more. They told me that the most eligible women marry young to get a 'good man' before they are all taken.
Every company I know is looking for more women at the table. Every board is looking for more women at the table. There's a reason why men want to understand the challenges women face, address them, because then they're going to be better hirers, attracters and retainers of women.
But I really believe that when you give people authentic identity, which is what Facebook does, and you can be your real self and connect with real people online, things will change.
The most important thing - and I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a hundred times - if you marry a man, marry the right one.
I have a five year-old son and a three year-old daughter. I want my son to have a choice to contribute fully in the workforce or at home. And I want my daughter to have the choice to not just succeed, but to be liked for her accomplishments.
If you ask men why they did a good job, they'll say, 'I'm awesome. Obviously. Why are you even asking?' If you ask women why they did a good job, what they'll say is someone helped them, they got lucky, they worked really hard.
I feel really grateful to the people who encouraged me and helped me develop. Nobody can succeed on their own.
