Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Pleased to say joining us right now is Bloomberg Originals host and executive producer Emily Chang. She joins us right now with Sheryl Sandberg. Emily.
Romaine, thank you so much. And Cheryl, thank you so much for joining us. I know this ambition gap is troubling to you. Essentially, women are leaning out. They're deciding they don't want to be promoted because it doesn't seem worth it. After all the work that's been done, all the talk, what do you think broke?
Well, let's start at the top. So not all women are leaning out and not all companies. But what our report shows this year, this is our 11th year, is that about half of companies no longer prioritize advancement for women. And 21% of those companies say women's career advancement is a low or no priority at all.
And those are the companies that participated in the women in the workplace report we do with McKinsey. And so these companies in many ways are the best of the best. And then we do see that ambition gap, but only when women don't get the opportunities and support they need.
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Chapter 2: What is the ambition gap and why is it significant?
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.
President Trump has called on companies to root out what he calls illegal DEI, you know, threatening federal contracts, threatening regulatory action. How... is this going to be looked back on? How is history going to look back on the DEI rollback?
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?
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Chapter 3: How do companies prioritize women's career advancement?
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? And I'll tell you, there's a lot they can do, and it's in our report, and it's completely legal. So for example, feedback.
1% of men get style-based feedback in performance reviews, and 66% of women. What can companies do? You establish criteria in advance that everyone agrees to that are universally applied. Everyone gets this kind of feedback that is not just legally permissible, but allowed and encouraged and creates a level playing field. This isn't about special treatment.
This is about giving everyone the opportunity to do their best work and contribute.
Meta is among many companies that have rolled back DEI policies, and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly blamed you for the policies being there in the first place. Some employees have felt that your legacy is being dismantled. What have your conversations been like with Mark about this? I know you're still friends, and you have to have feelings about this.
I don't think that's exactly what happened in that meeting, and Mark went out and publicly posted and clarified. But here's what I would say, is that every company, including Meta, has the opportunity to make sure that they're fair to women. Here's what the data shows us over and over and over again. So many examples.
When a man and woman ask for raises or promotions, the woman's 30% more likely to be told she's too aggressive. What do you do? Standardize your processes. Every company should be doing it. So, for example, interviews.
If you don't have agreed upon questions you ask, naturally, and maybe not on purpose, but naturally, people sometimes ask the easier questions to the men and the harder questions to the women. Just standardize your questions. Put systems in place that protect people, but also that just give people the opportunity to contribute.
You have to acknowledge that there's a big rhetoric shift happening. And obviously we're seeing it in Silicon Valley. We are seeing people, tech leaders who said one thing in the last election now whispering in the president's ear. A lot of these people that you know personally. What do you think is happening here? Is this transactional? Is this just business?
Or is this a real change in values happening?
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Chapter 4: What barriers do women face in the workplace?
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. This is about, do we want our companies to succeed?
You built two companies, helped build two companies that are incredibly economically productive. We are in the middle of this massive AI moment where companies are investing a lot. But it's also total... chaos it seems for, you know, within and among some of these startups that are trying to build sustainable business models in an AI moment.
What's your advice to companies right now about how they build a business model that can work and survive in the age of AI?
You know, it's such a good question, and I was at Google in some of the early years, and then I went to Facebook, you know, now Meta. And I do think there's times when it really makes sense to invest ahead of revenue and business models, right?
If Google, when I was there in the early days, had tried to cover our costs for search, we never would have gotten enough search out there to get enough user feedback to improve the search results to get to what was a great business for Google. So it makes sense. At some point, at some level, you have to have revenue that covers costs. Is that from ads? Well, people make it so complicated.
It's not complicated. Ready? Someone has to pay. Who can pay? Businesses can pay. They can pay via advertising. They can pay via paying in some way, shape, or form for database services. Or people have to pay. And it will be a combination of all of these things. But over time, the revenue is going to have to cover the costs.
All right. Sheryl Sandberg, author of Lean In, you know, obviously helped build Facebook and Google into what they are today.
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