Sheryl Sandberg

I think a lot of the rhetoric is terrible.

And I think we see some of the impacts in this report.

But I'm 56, so I've been in the workforce.

This is my fourth decade.

And what I see is that we make progress, we backslide.

We make progress, there's a backlash.

I think the reason these ideas take hold so easily is they were never really gone.

Even though the rhetoric is bad now, do I really think we ever fully encouraged leadership in little girls and little boys and women as much as men?

No.

So when it happens, when this rhetoric happens, it's so easy to take hold because it's like fertile ground.

I'll give you one that really scares me.

8th and 10th grade boys, middle and high school boys, they surveyed them in 2018, and they said, do you believe women should have the same opportunities as men in the workforce?

In 2018, 63% said yes.

I could spend all day talking about why that's so upsetting.

Like, where are the other 37%?

But 63% said yes.

Today it's 45%.

We are seeing that same double-ditch slide in middle and high school boys believing that women should get equal pay today.

That's not OK.

And what it's going to take to change that is, I think, people realizing that this is about economic productivity.