Sheryl Sandberg

Sheryl Kara Sandberg (born August 28, 1969) is an American technology executive, philanthropist, and writer. Sandberg served as chief operating officer (COO) of Meta Platforms, a position from which she stepped down in August 2022. She is also the founder of LeanIn.Org. In 2008, she was made COO at Facebook, becoming the company's second-highest ranking official. In June 2012, she was elected to Facebook's board of directors, becoming the first woman to serve on its board.

Quotes

• "I think denial is the worst. I think silence is the next worst." [on the sexual violence committed by Hamas during the October 7 hostage crisis]
  • ""I Was Wrong About Anti Semitism": Sheryl Sandberg on Waking Up", on Honestly with Bari Weiss, found on DeepCast (13 June 2024)

• "Colleges have a responsibility to keep our kids safe. Full stop. And protect them from hate. Full stop. And they have the ability to do this." [on 2024 Pro-Palestine College Protests]
  • "In conversation with Sheryl Sandberg, plus open-source AI gene editing explained", on All-In with Chamath, Jason, Sacks & Friedberg, found on DeepCast (3 May 2024)

• If we could get to a place of true equality, where what we do in life is determined not by gender but by our passions and interests, our companies would be more productive and our home lives not just better balanced but happier.
• There aren’t enough women sitting at the tables where decisions are made.
• Reigniting the revolution means I want us to notice all of this and find ways to encourage more women to step up and more companies to recognize what women bring to the table.
• Women face huge institutional barriers. But we also face barriers that exist within ourselves, sometimes as the result of our socialization.
• I am not blaming women; I’m helping them see the power they’ve got and encouraging them to use it.
• We don’t really encourage women to be leaders.
• We call our daughters—but not our sons—bossy. We overestimate our sons’ crawling abilities and underestimate our daughters’.
• Women are given messages all through their lives that they shouldn’t lead.
• At the same time, the world still isn’t very welcoming or respectful toward full-time at-home dads.
• No one talks about gender in the workplace, because if you say the words "I am a woman," the other person is likely to hear "I want special treatment" or "I’m going to sue you."
• One of my goals is to make gender an open and honest topic in the workplace.
• If we want to balance out leadership roles in the workplace, we have to balance out responsibilities in the home.
• We need to recognize that we can’t do it all, that we face trade-offs every single minute of the day. We have to stop beating ourselves up for not doing everything perfectly.
• The data show that success and likability are positively correlated for men and negatively correlated for women. Which means that as women get more successful, they are liked less—both by men and by other women. That’s because we want people to conform to our stereotypes.
• We expect men to have leadership qualities, to be assertive and competent, to speak out. We expect women to have communal qualities, to be givers and sharers, to pursue the common good.
• But the struggles I write about are the ones all women face: the struggle to believe in yourself, to not feel guilty, to get enough sleep, to believe that you can be both a good professional and a good parent.
• Crying at work is not a best practice.
• I’m not recommending that if you want to get to the top, you should break out the tissues. But we’re human, and it’s important to broaden the kinds of behaviors that are acceptable at work.
• The media rarely depict working women with children as happy and adjusted and comfortable with themselves.
• There’s this assumption that women can’t and men can. My goal is to change that conversation.
• Similarly, I don’t think the desire for leadership is based in biology. Do we really believe men are natural leaders and women are not?
• I think the desire for leadership is largely culturally created and reinforced.
• It’s the single most important career decision a woman makes: Is she going to have a life partner, and is that partner going to support her career? And by "support," I mean getting up in the middle of the night half the time to change diapers.
• Next time you go to a party, watch what happens when a baby starts crying. Watch the parents and see who gets up.
• Women still largely have two jobs, and men have one.
• If we start acknowledging what the real issues are, we can solve them. It’s not that hard.
  • "Now Is Our Time" by Editor in Chief. April, 2013. Retrieved 23/11/2023.
• I think women in leadership suffer from stereotyping, and when people expect a stereotype and are reminded of a stereotype, that actually makes the stereotype stronger.
• What has happened is that there aren’t women in leadership roles, therefore people don’t expect there to be women in leadership roles, therefore, there aren’t women in leadership roles.
• I think we need to expect and encourage our girls and women to lead and contribute.
• When we say choice, we mean women get to choose to work or have families. We don’t mean men choose to work or have families.
• Real choice would mean that people were choosing based on their interests and personal passions, not based on their gender.
• As a woman gets more successful, she is less liked by people of both genders, and as a man gets more successful, he does not take a likability hit.
• It’s the classic chicken-and-egg problem: we need more women leaders to show more women they can lead, and we need to show more women they can lead to get more women leaders.
• In our society, we don’t talk about gender, at all. I don’t understand how you fix a problem if you can’t acknowledge you have one.
• The word "female," when inserted in front of something, is always with a note of surprise.
• But the women have to run in order to get elected. And right now, they are less inclined to do so.
• The concrete things are men need to do more childcare and housework.
• We need to get to equality in the home. We cannot have equality in the office until we have equality in the home. It can’t happen.
• I think equal maternity and paternity leave are hugely important. How are we going to teach men to be equals if the average woman takes three months and the average man takes two weeks?
  • Interview with Sheryl Sandberg by Marianne Schnall. Retrieved 23/11/2023.
• I won’t stop until women run half the companies and half the countries and men are doing half the housework.
  • Exclusive Interview With Sheryl Sandberg, COO Of Facebook: “The Priority Is To Help Small Businesses” by Jamila Gandhi. October 4, 2021. Retrieved 23/11/2023.