Sheryl Sandberg on Why Women Are 'Leaning Out' in Work

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00:00I know this ambition gap is troubling to you. Essentially, women are leaning out. They're

00:04deciding they don't want to be promoted because it doesn't seem worth it. After all the work

00:09that's been done, all the talk, what do you think broke? Well, let's start at the top.

00:14So not all women are leaning out and not all companies. But what our report shows this year,

00:19this is our 11th year, is that about half of companies no longer prioritize advancement for

00:25women. And 21 percent of those companies say women's career advancement is a low or no priority

00:32at all. And those are the companies that participated in the Women in the Workplace report we do with

00:37McKinsey. And so these companies, in many ways, are the best of the best. And then we do see that

00:43ambition gap, but only when women don't get the opportunities and support they need.

00:49How does this put companies at risk? Or is the conventional wisdom that this is better for

00:55business not ringing true? I think the conventional wisdom should be and is what's true, which is that

01:02when you get the best out of your whole workforce, you're going to do better. So what's happening is

01:07that women face more barriers at every level of the career. Entry level, we call it the broken rung,

01:13and we see it every year. For every 100 men that get promoted, 93 women, 60 black women, 82 Latinas.

01:22That's because we hire and promote men based on potential and women for what they've already

01:26proven. So of course, women can't prove they're a manager. Then at the senior levels, our report shows

01:33this year that at the same levels, a man is 70 percent more likely to get tapped for leadership

01:39training. Think about what that says. You're a future leader. Come to leadership training.

01:44And so this is only happening in the companies that aren't doing the right thing. When women get

01:49the full support and the same stretch opportunities, they're not leaning out at all. And so it's a

01:55question of economic productivity. Do we want to get the best growth in our economy? Do we want to get

02:01the best out of our workforce? We're at a fork in the road and companies have a decision to make.

02:05The Trump administration is pushing policies that explicitly try to incentivize women

02:10to have more babies while simultaneously weakening workplace protections. Do you see these

02:17natalist policies, as they are called, as pressure on women to return to traditional roles? Or is it

02:25support for families? I mean, look, women can have as many kids as they want and still have to go to

02:34work. I think what we forget in a lot of this is that the great majority of women do not have the

02:41choice to be a full-time mother and a full-time spouse. Now, I feel we sometimes come up with new

02:47language for old ideas. And I want to be clear. If you can afford to be a full-time spouse and a full-time

02:53parent as a man or a woman and you want to do that, I think that can be deeply fulfilling work. But we've got to

03:00remember that most women don't have that option. They have an economic reality that they have to

03:05wake up in the morning and leave their home to earn money to support their families. And so, again,

03:11new language for old ideas, trad wife. That's just telling these women that have to leave their home that

03:17it's going to harm their marriages and their kids. That's not what the data supports. We should be able to make

03:23any choice we make without putting old pressures on women in a modern workforce where that's not the

03:30economic reality they live in. President Trump has called on companies to root out what he calls

03:35illegal DEI, you know, threatening federal contracts, threatening regulatory action. How

03:42is this going to be looked back on? How is history going to look back on the DEI rollback?

03:48You know, I think people didn't understand and thought that women were getting unfair treatment.

03:56But let's throw some numbers at this. Women got 59 percent of the college degrees and women are 10

04:03percent of Fortune 500 CEO jobs. I'm not saying there aren't times when people are given preferential

04:09treatment. Of course there are. But on average, in our economy, do you really think that 59 percent of

04:15the college degrees getting 10 percent of the jobs means there's systematic special treatment for

04:21women? I mean, my experience in the workforce and I think yours and a lot of people's is that

04:25it was hard. It was hard to be one of the only women women in the room. And so the question is,

04:31what can companies do? And I'll tell you, there's a lot they can do. And it's in our report

04:35and it's completely legal. So for example, feedback, one percent of men get style based

04:43feedback in performance reviews and 66 percent of women. What can companies do? You establish

04:49criteria in advance that everyone agrees to that are universally applied. Everyone gets this kind

04:55of feedback that is not just legally permissible, but allowed and encouraged and creates a level playing

05:02field. This isn't about special treatment. This is about giving everyone the opportunity to do

05:07their best work and contribute. Meta is among many companies that have rolled back DEI policies and

05:14Mark Zuckerberg reportedly blamed you for the policies being there in the first place. Some

05:20employees have felt that your legacy is being dismantled. What have your conversations been like

05:25with Mark about this? I know you're still friends and you have to have feelings about this.

05:29I don't think that's exactly what happened in that meeting. And Mark went out and publicly posted

05:34and clarified. But here's what I would say is that every company, including Meta, has the opportunity

05:40to make sure that they're fair to women. Here's what the data shows us over and over and over again.

05:48So many examples. When a man and woman ask for raises or promotions, the woman's 30 percent more likely

05:55to be told she's too aggressive. What do you do? Standardize your processes. Every company should

06:01be doing it. So, for example, interviews. If you don't have agreed upon questions you ask

06:07naturally and maybe not on purpose, but naturally, people sometimes ask the easier questions to the

06:13men and the harder questions to the women. Just standardize your questions. Put systems in place

06:19that protect people, but also that just give people the opportunity to contribute.

06:25You have to acknowledge that there's a big rhetoric shift happening. And obviously,

06:30we're seeing it in Silicon Valley. We are seeing people, tech leaders who said one thing in the

06:34last election, now whispering in the president's ear. A lot of these people that you know personally,

06:39what do you think is happening here? Is this transactional? Is this just business? Or is this

06:43a real change in values happening? I think a lot of the rhetoric is terrible. And I think we see some

06:50of the impacts in this report. But, you know, I'm 56, so I've been in the workforce. It's my fourth

06:56decade. And what I see is that we make progress. We backslide. We make progress. There's a backlash.

07:02I think the reason these ideas take hold so easily is they were never really gone. Even though the

07:08rhetoric is bad now, do I really think we ever fully encouraged leadership in little girls and

07:14little boys and women as much as men? No. So when it happens, when this rhetoric happens,

07:21it's so easy to take hold because it's like fertile ground. I'll give you one that really scares me.

07:28Eighth and 10th grade boys, middle and high school boys, they surveyed them in 2018.

07:32And they said, what do you believe women should have the same opportunities as men in the workforce?

07:38In 2018, 63% said yes. I could spend all day talking about why that's so upsetting. Like,

07:45where are the other 37%? But 63% said yes. Today it's 45. We are seeing that same double-ditch slide

07:54in middle and high school boys believing that women should get equal pay.

07:58That's not okay. And what it's going to take to change that is I think people realizing that this

08:06is about economic productivity. This is about, do we want our companies to succeed?

08:10You built two companies, helped build two companies that are incredibly economically productive. We are

08:14in the middle of this massive AI moment where companies are investing a lot, but it's also total

08:20chaos, it seems, for within and among some of these startups that are trying to build sustainable

08:26business models in an AI moment. What's your advice to companies right now about how they build

08:31a business model that can work and survive in the age of AI?

08:36You know, it's such a good question. And I was at Google in some of the early years, and then I went

08:40to Facebook, you know, now Meta. And I do think there's times when it really makes sense to invest

08:47ahead of revenue and business models, right? If Google, when I was there in the early days,

08:51had tried to cover our costs for search, we never would have gotten enough search out there to get

08:56enough user feedback to improve the search results, to get to what was a great business for Google. So

09:00it makes sense. At some point, at some level, you have to have revenue that covers costs.

09:06Is that from ads?

09:07Well, people make it so complicated. It's not complicated. Ready? Someone has to pay. Who can pay?

09:12Businesses can pay. They can pay via advertising. They can pay via paying in some way, shape,

09:17or form for database services. Or people have to pay. And it will be a combination of all of these

09:22things. But over time, the revenue is going to have to cover the costs.

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