Sheryl Sandberg is an American economist, author, and CEO. She is the founder of Leanin.org, she currently serves as Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer (COO) and was part of the company’s executive committee.
A while ago, Sandberg gave an interesting TED talk about the challenges faced by women who want to take leadership and how we unintentionally hinder ourselves in the development of our careers. Her talk was attended by many women seeking to better understand this situation.
We have a real problem: women are not reaching the top of their professions anywhere in the world. Additionally, they must face tougher choices between career success and personal fulfillment and as a consequence, many women are putting aside their studies.
We must ask ourselves what are the possible solutions that are within reach of our hands so that the situation changes. One option is to keep women in the workforce, and for this to happen, there are three things to remember:
1. Sit at the table
Women systematically underestimate their ability, we do not negotiate for ourselves at work. Even more important, unlike men, we often attribute our success to external factors. Why does this topic matter? The answer is because to see changes it is necessary to sit at the table to negotiate to get a change. Nor does anyone get a promotion if they don’t think they deserve success or at least don’t acknowledge their own success. You must have faith in yourself.
2. Make your relationship a real team
Many married women have children but who, in turn, want to continue working as their husbands do. The problem appears when it is the woman who has to, apart from working outside, also work inside the house, making her day-to-day more laborious than that of men. So she has three jobs, or two, and he has one. This is where household chores must be shared by both sexes for the relationship to work, therefore, your relationship with your partner should be like a team.
3. Keep going
An example: when a woman thinks about having a baby, she also analyzes how to make room for this future baby in her life, and from that moment on she no longer raises her hand. She is no longer looking for a promotion, she is not taking the new project, etc, she starts to back down, even for something that can take a long time. Don’t quit and stay. Keep your foot on the throttle until the day you finally need to take a break to have this child. Only then make your decisions and do not do it too early. Especially those decisions that they don’t even know they are making.
To conclude, men and women must be equal in all spheres of life, including the workplace. Companies need to understand that greater diversity in senior positions leads to better decision-making and better business results.