Lean In

alarmed not just at how we as women fail to put ourselves forward, but also at how we fail to notice and correct for this gap. And that “we” includes me. A few years ago, I gave a talk on gender issues to a few hundred employees at Facebook. After my speech, I took questions for as long as time permitted. Later that afternoon, I came back to my desk, where a young woman was waiting to talk to me. “I learned something today,” she said. “What?” I asked, feeling good, as I figured she was about to tell me how my words had touched her. Instead, she said, “I learned to keep my hand up.” She explained that toward the end of my talk, I had said that I would take only two more questions. I did so, and then she put her hand down, along with all of the other women. But several men kept their hands up. And since hands were still waving in the air, I took more questions—only from the men. Instead of my words touching her, her words hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though I was giving a speech
on gender issues
, I had been blind to one myself.
    If we want a world with greater equality, we need to acknowledge that women are less likely to keep their hands up. We need institutions and individuals to notice and correct for this behavior by encouraging, promoting, and championing more women. And women have to learn to keep their hands up, because when they lower them, even managers with the best intentions might not notice.
    When I first started working for Larry Summers, thenchief economist at the World Bank, he was married to a tax attorney, Vicki. He was very supportive of Vicki’s career and used to urge her to “bill like a boy.” His view was that the men considered any time they spent thinking about an issue—even time in the shower—as billable hours. His wife and her female colleagues, however, would decide that they were not at their best on a given day and discount hours they spent at their desks to be fair to the client. Which lawyers were more valuable to that firm? To make his point, Larry told them the story of a renowned Harvard Law School professor who was asked by a judge to itemize a bill. The professor responded that he could not because he was so often thinking about two things at once.
    Even now, I’m a long way from mastering the art of feeling confident. In August 2011,
Forbes
put out its annual World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list. 15 I’m savvy enough to know that the list wasn’t based on a scientific formula and that magazines love these features because they generate lots of page views as readers click through each name. Still, I was shocked—no, horrified—to learn that
Forbes
ranked me as the fifth most powerful woman in the world, right after German chancellor Angela Merkel, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, and the CEO of PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi. This put me ahead of First Lady Michelle Obama and Indian politician Sonia Gandhi. Absurd. My own mother called to say, “Well, dear, I do think you are very powerful, but I am not sure you are more powerful than Michelle Obama.”
You think?
    Far from feeling powerful, I felt embarrassed and exposed. When colleagues at Facebook stopped me in the halls to say congratulations, I pronounced the list “ridiculous.” When friends posted the link on Facebook, I asked them to take it down. After a few days, my longtime executive assistant, Camille Hart, summoned me into a conference room and closed the door. This was serious. She told me that I was handling the
Forbes
thing poorly and that I needed to stop subjectinganyone who brought up the list to a diatribe on its absurdity. I was showing too many people how uncomfortable I felt and revealing my insecurity. Instead, I needed to simply say, “Thank you.”
    We all need colleagues like Camille, who was honest enough to point out my less-than-gracious response. She was right. Whether the list was ridiculous or not, I didn’t write it and I didn’t have to react negatively to it. I doubt a man would have felt so overwhelmed by others’ perception of his power.
    I know that my success comes from hard work, help from others, and being at the right place at the right time. I feel a deep and enduring sense of gratitude to those who have given me opportunities and support. I recognize the sheer luck of being born into my family in the United States rather than one of the many places in the world where women are denied basic rights. I believe that