so long ago -- a professor who was then at Columbia University took that case and made it Howard Roizen. And he gave case out -- both of them -- to two groups of students. He changed exactly one word: Heidi to Howard. But that one word made a really big difference. He then surveyed the students. And the good news was the students, both men and women, thought Heidi and Howard were equally competent, and that's good. The bad news was that everyone liked Howard. He's a great guy, you want to work for him, you want to spend the day fishing with him. But Heidi? Not so sure. She's a little out for herself. She's a little political. You're not sure you'd want to work for her. This is the complication. We have to tell our daughters and our colleagues, we have to tell ourselves to believe we got the A, to reach for the promotion, to sit at the table. And we have to do it in a world where, for them, there are sacrifices they will make for that, even though for their brothers, there are not.
The saddest thing about all of this is that it's really hard to remember this. And I'm about to tell a story which is truly embarrassing for me, but I think important. I gave this talk at Facebook not so long ago to about a hundred employees. And a couple hours later, there was a young woman who works there sitting outside my little desk, and she wanted to talk to me. I said, okay, and she sat down, and we talked. And she said, \learned that I need to keep my hand up.\you mean?\you said you were going to take two more questions. And I had my hand up with lots of other people, and you took two more questions. And I put my hand down, and I noticed all the women put their hand down, and then you took more questions, only from the men.\wow, if it's me -- who cares about this, obviously -- giving this talk -- and during this talk, I can't even notice that the men's hands are still raised, and the women's hands are still raised, how good are we as managers of our
companies and our organizations at seeing that the men are reaching for opportunities more than women? We've got to get women to sit at the table.
Message number two: make your partner a real partner. I've become convinced that we've made more progress in the workforce than we have in the home. The data shows this very clearly. If a woman and a man work full-time and have a child, the woman does twice the amount of housework the man does, and the woman does three times the amount of child care the man does. So she's got three jobs or two jobs, and he's got one. Who do you think drops out when someone needs to be home more? The causes of this are really complicated, and I don't have time to go into them. And I don't think Sunday football watching and general laziness is the cause.
I think the cause is more complicated. I think, as a society, we put more pressure on our boys to succeed that we do on our girls. I know men that stay home and work in the home to support wives with careers And it's hard. When I
go to the Mommy-and-Me stuff and I see the father there, I notice that the other mommies don't play with him. And that's a problem, because we have to make it as important a job -- because it's the hardest job in the world -- to work inside the home for people of both genders if we're going to even things out and let women stay in the workforce. Studies show that households with equal earning and equal responsibility also have half the divorce rate. And if that wasn't good enough motivation for everyone out there, they also have more -- how shall I say this on this stage? -- they know each other more in the biblical sense as well. Message number three: don't leave before you leave. I think there's a really deep irony to the fact that actions women are taking -- and I see this all the time -- with the objective of staying in the workforce, actually lead to their eventually leaving. Here's what happens: We're all busy; everyone's busy; a woman's busy. And she starts thinking about having a child. And from the moment she starts thinking about having a child, she starts thinking about
making room for that child. \everything else I'm doing?\she doesn't raise her hand anymore, she doesn't look for a promotion, she doesn't take on the new project, she doesn't say, \back. The problem is that -- let's say she got pregnant that day, that day -- nine months of pregnancy, three months of maternity leave, six months to catch your breath -- fast-forward two years, more often -- and as I've seen it -- women start thinking about this way earlier -- when they get engaged, when they get married, when they start thinking about trying to have a child, which can take a long time. One woman came to see me about this, and I kind of looked at her -- she looked a little young. And I said, \are you and your husband thinking about having a baby?\And she said, \have a boyfriend. I said, \way too early.\