Lean In

women’s best efforts. Governmental and company policies such as paid personal time off, affordable high-quality child care, and flexible work practices would serve families, and society, well.
    One miscalculation that some women make is to drop out early in their careers because their salary barely covers the cost of child care. Child care is a huge expense, and it’s frustrating to work hard just to break even. But professional women need to measure the cost of child care against their future salary rather than their current salary. Anna Fieler describes becoming a mom at thirty-two as “the time when the rubber hit the road.” A rising star in marketing, Anna was concerned that her after-tax salary barely covered her child care expenses. “With husbands often making more than wives, it seems like higher ROI to just invest in
his
career,” she told me. But she thought about all the time and money she had already invested in
her
career and didn’t see how walking away made economic sense either. So she made what she called “a leap of blind faith” and stayed in the workforce. Years later, her income is many times greater than when she almost withdrew. Wisely, Anna andother women have started to think of paying for child care as a way of investing in their families’ future. As the years go by, compensation often increases. Flexibility typically increases, too, as senior leaders often have more control over their hours and schedules.
    And what about men who want to leave the workforce? If we make it too easy for women to drop out of the career marathon, we also make it too hard for men. Just as women feel that they bear the primary responsibility of caring for their children, many men feel that they bear the primary responsibility of supporting their families financially. Their self-worth is tied mainly to their professional success, and they frequently believe that they have no choice but to finish that marathon.
    Choosing to leave a child in someone else’s care and return to work is a difficult decision. Any parent who has done this, myself included, knows how heart wrenching it can be. Only a compelling, challenging, and rewarding job will begin to make that choice a fair contest. And even after a choice is made, parents have every right to reassess along the way.
    Anyone lucky enough to have options should keep them open. Don’t enter the workforce already looking for the exit. Don’t put on the brakes. Accelerate. Keep a foot on the gas pedal until a decision must be made. That’s the only way to ensure that when that day comes, there will be a real decision to make.

10
Let’s Start Talking About It
    S OMETIMES I WONDER what it would be like to go through life without being labeled by my gender. I don’t wake up thinking,
What am I going to do today as Facebook’s female COO?
, but that’s often how I’m referred to by others. When people talk about a female pilot, a female engineer, or a female race car driver, the word “female” implies a bit of surprise. Men in the professional world are rarely seen through this same gender lens. A Google search for “Facebook’s male CEO” returns this message: “No results found.”
    As Gloria Steinem observed, “Whoever has power takes over the noun—and the norm—while the less powerful get an adjective.” 1 Since no one wants to be perceived as less powerful, a lot of women reject the gender identification and insist, “I don’t see myself as a woman; I see myself as a novelist/​athlete/​professional/​fill-in-the-blank.” They are right to do so. No one wants her achievements modified. We all just want to be the noun. Yet the world has a way of reminding women that they are women, and girls that they are girls.
    In between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked as a page in Washington, D.C., for my hometowncongressman, William Lehman. The Speaker of the House at the time was the legendary Massachusetts representative Tip O’Neill, and Congressman Lehman promised to introduce me to him before the summer ended. But as the days ticked by, it didn’t happen. And it didn’t happen. Then, on the very last day of the session, he made good on his promise. In the hall outside the House floor, he pulled me over to meet Speaker O’Neill. I was nervous, but Congressman Lehman put me at ease by introducing me in the nicest way possible, telling the Speaker that I had worked hard all summer. The Speaker looked at me, then