Sheryl Sandberg

We're at a fork in the road, and companies have a decision to make.

I mean, look, women can have as many kids as they want and still have to go to work.

I think what we forget in a lot of this is that the great majority of women do not have the choice to be a full-time mother and a full-time spouse.

Now, I feel we sometimes come up with new language for old ideas.

And I want to be clear, if you can afford to be a full-time spouse and a full-time parent as a man or a woman, and you want to do that, I think that can be deeply fulfilling work.

But we've got to remember that most women don't have that option.

They have an economic reality that they have to wake up in the morning and leave their home to earn money to support their families.

And so, again, new language for old ideas, trad wife.

That's just telling these women that have to leave their home that it's going to harm their marriages and their kids.

That's not what the data supports.

We should be able to make any choice we make without putting old pressures on women in the modern workforce where that's not the economic reality they live in.

You know, I think people didn't understand and thought that women were getting unfair treatment.

But let's throw some numbers at this.

Women got 59% of the college degrees, and women are 10% of Fortune 500 CEO jobs.

I'm not saying there aren't times when people are given preferential treatment.

Of course there are.

But on average, in our economy, do you really think that 59% of the college degrees getting 10% of the jobs means there's systematic special treatment for women?

I mean, my experience in the workforce, and I think yours and a lot of people's, is that it was hard.

It was hard to be one of the only women in the room.

And so the question is, what can companies do?