Lean In

that I can recall. That all seemed fine. We were fitting in, and there was no reason to call attention to ourselves.
    But while gender was not openly acknowledged, it was still lurking below the surface. I started to see differences in attitudes toward women. I started noticing how often employees were judged not by their objective performance, but by the subjective standard of how well they fit in. Given that the summer outing at McKinsey was a deep-sea fishing trip and most company dinners ended with whiskey sipping and cigar smoking, I sometimes struggled to pass the “fitting in” test. One night, encouraged by the male partners, I puffed away on a cigar—just one of the guys. Except that the smoking nauseated me and I reeked of cigar smoke for days. If that was fitting in, I stuck out.
    Others also seemed aware that I was not one of the guys. When I was named the Treasury Department’s chief of staff in 1999, several people remarked to me, “It must have helpedthat you were a woman.” It was infuriating. Their intent may not have been malicious, but the implication was clear: I had not gotten the job on merit. I also figured that for every person pointing out my “advantage” to my face, there were probably a dozen others saying it less politely behind my back. I considered my possible responses. I could explain that the last time I checked there was no affirmative action for women at Treasury. I could mention that my credentials lined up with those of the men who had previously held this position. If there was enough time, I could recount centuries of discrimination against women. Or I could just slap the person across the face. I tried all these options at least once. Okay, not the slap. But of the responses I did try, none of them worked.
    It was a no-win situation. I couldn’t deny being a woman; even if I tried, people would still figure it out. And defending myself just made me seem … defensive. My gut and the signals I received from others cautioned me that arguing the issue would make me sound like a strident feminist. And I still did not want that. I also worried that pointing out the disadvantages women face in the workforce might be misinterpreted as whining or asking for special treatment. So I ignored the comments. I put my head down and worked hard.
    Then, as the years ticked by, I started seeing female friends and colleagues drop out of the workforce. Some left by choice. Others left out of frustration, pushed out the door by companies that did not allow flexibility and welcomed home by partners who weren’t doing their share of the housework and child rearing. Others remained but scaled back their ambitions to meet outsized demands. I watched as the promise my generation had for female leadership dwindled. By the time I had been at Google for a few years, I realized that the problem wasn’t going away. So even though the thought still scared me, I decided it was time to stop putting my head down and to start speaking out.
    Fortunately, I had company. In 2005, my colleagues SusanWojcicki and Marissa Mayer and I all noticed that the speakers who visited the Google campus were fascinating, notable, and almost always male. In response, we founded Women@Google and kicked off the new series with luminaries Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, who were launching the Women’s Media Center. As a former aerobics instructor, I was excited to meet Jane Fonda—and sucked in my stomach the whole time. From what I knew about the women’s rights movement, I expected Gloria Steinem to be formidable and brilliant, which she was. But she was also charming and funny and warm—the absolute opposite of my childish image of the humorless feminist.
    After the Women@Google event, Gloria invited me to speak at the Women’s Media Center in New York. I said yes without hesitating. The day before the talk, I headed to the airport with Kim Malone Scott, who ran the Google publishing teams. Kim is an experienced writer, so I figured she would help me craft a speech during the long flight. By the time I got through all of my backlogged e-mails, it was almost midnight. I turned to Kim for help and saw that she had fallen asleep. Long before Facebook made it popular, I thought about giving her a poke. But I couldn’t bear to wake her up. Staring at the blank computer screen, I was at a complete loss. I had never spoken about being a woman in public before. Not once. I had no talking points or notes to turn to. Then