Lean In

I realized how striking this was … and that I actually had quite a lot to say.
    I began my talk the next day by explaining that in business we are taught to fit in, but that I was starting to think this might not be the right approach. I said out loud that there are differences between men and women both in their behavior and in the way their behavior is perceived by others. I admitted that I could see these dynamics playing out in the workforce, and that, in order to fix the problems, we needed to be able to talk about gender without people thinking we were crying for help, asking for special treatment, or about to sue. A lot pouredout of me that day. Then I returned to Northern California and put the conversation on hold.
    In the following four years, I gave two talks on women in the workplace, both behind closed doors to professional women’s groups at nearby Stanford. Then one day, Pat Mitchell called to tell me that she was launching TEDWomen and invited me to speak on social media. I told her I had another subject in mind and started pulling together a talk on how women can succeed in the workforce (a talk that TED later named “Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders”). Very quickly, I became excited. And just as quickly, I learned that no one else shared my excitement. Friends and colleagues—both male and female—warned me that making this speech would harm my career by instantly typecasting me as a female COO and not a real business executive. In other words, I wouldn’t be blending in.
    I worried they might be right. Speaking at TED would be different from my previous keynotes. Although I would be addressing a sympathetic room, the talk would be posted on the web, where
anyone
could watch, and judge, and criticize.
    Inside Facebook, few people noticed my TEDTalk, and those who did responded positively. But outside of Facebook, the criticism started to roll in. One of my colleagues from Treasury called to say that “others”—not him, of course—were wondering why I gave more speeches on women’s issues than on Facebook. I had been at the company for two and a half years and given countless speeches on rebuilding marketing around the social graph and exactly
one
speech on gender. Someone else asked me, “So is this your thing now?”
    At the time, I didn’t know how to respond. Now I would say yes. I made this my “thing” because we need to disrupt the status quo.Staying quiet and fitting in may have been all the first generations of women who entered corporate America could do; in some cases, it might still be the safest path. But this strategy is not paying off for women as a group. Instead,we need to speak out, identify the barriers that are holding women back, and find solutions.
    The response to my TEDTalk showed me that addressing these issues openly can make a difference. Women forwarded the video to their friends, colleagues, daughters, and sisters. I began receiving e-mails and letters from women all over the world who wanted to share their stories of how they gained the courage to reach for more opportunities, sit at more tables, and believe more in themselves.
    One of my favorite letters came from Sabeen Virani, a consultant in Dubai and the only woman in an office of more than three hundred employees. She responded to my story about the executive who could not point me to the women’s bathroom because, as she explained, in her workplace, the women’s bathroom did not even exist. Sabeen described how during her first week on the project, the client took her team out to dinner, but she couldn’t join because the restaurant didn’t allow women. Talk about not sitting at the table—she couldn’t even get into the restaurant! Some of the men were openly hostile to Sabeen. Others just ignored her. But rather than give up and transfer to a friendlier office, she decided that she could demonstrate to everyone that women are competent professionals. In the end, she won her coworkers over and the client converted a bathroom into a women’s bathroom just for her. She sent me a photo of her standing in front of a door with a printed sign that read simply and powerfully “Toilets for women only.”
    It was also enormously gratifying that men reacted positively to the talk too. Dr. John Probasco of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine told me that my story about women being more reluctant than men to raise their hands rang true for him so he decided to do away with the old