Speaker 1: Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio news.
Speaker 2: Please to say.
Speaker 3: Joining us right now is Bloomberg Original's host and executive
Speaker 3: producer Emily Chang.
Speaker 2: She joins us right now with Cheryl Sandberg. Emily Romaine.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much on Cheryl, thank you so much
Speaker 3: for joining us. I know this ambition gap is troubling
Speaker 3: to you. Essentially, women are leaning out. They're deciding they
Speaker 3: don't want to be promoted because it doesn't seem worth
Speaker 3: it after all the work that's been done, all the talk,
Speaker 3: what do you think.
Speaker 2: Broke, Well, let's start at the top.
Speaker 1: So not all women are leaning out, and not all companies.
Speaker 1: But what our report shows this year, this is our
Speaker 1: eleventh year, is that about half of companies no longer
Speaker 1: prioritize advancement for women, and twenty one percent of those
Speaker 1: companies say women's career advancement is a low or no
Speaker 1: priority at all. And those are the companies that participated
Speaker 1: in the Women in the Workplace report we do with McKinsey.
Speaker 1: And so these companies in many ways are the best
Speaker 1: the best, and then we do see that ambition gap,
Speaker 1: but only when women don't get the opportunities and support
Speaker 1: they need.
Speaker 3: How when companies at risk like or is the conventional
Speaker 3: wisdom that this is better for business not ringing true.
Speaker 1: I think the conventional wisdom should be and is what's true,
Speaker 1: which is that when you get the best out of
Speaker 1: your whole workforce, you're going to do better. So what's
Speaker 1: happening is that women face more barriers at every level
Speaker 1: of the career entry level. We call it the broken wrung,
Speaker 1: and we see it every year. For every one hundred
Speaker 1: men that get promoted, ninety three women, sixty black women,
Speaker 1: eighty two latinas. That's because we hire and promote men
Speaker 1: based on potential and women for what they've already proven.
Speaker 2: So of course women can't prove they're a manager.
Speaker 1: Then at the senior levels, our report shows this year
Speaker 1: that at the same levels, a man is seventy percent
Speaker 1: more likely to get tapped for leadership training. Think about
Speaker 1: what that says. If you're a future leader, come to
Speaker 1: leadership training. And so this is only happening in the
Speaker 1: companies that aren't doing the right thing. When women get
Speaker 1: the full support and the same stretch opportunities, they're not
Speaker 1: leaning out at all. And so it's a question of
Speaker 1: economic productivity. Do we want to get the best growth
Speaker 1: in our economy? Do we want to get the best
Speaker 1: out of our workforce. We're at to fork in the road,
Speaker 1: and companies have a decision to make.
Speaker 3: The Trump administration is pushing policies that explicitly try to
Speaker 3: incentivize women to have more babies while simultaneously weakening workplace protections.
Speaker 3: Do you see these natalist policies as they are called,
Speaker 3: as pressure on women to return to traditional roles or
Speaker 3: is it support for families?
Speaker 1: I mean, look, women can have as many kids as
Speaker 1: they want and still have to go to work. I
Speaker 1: think what we forget in a lot of this is
Speaker 1: that the great majority of women do not have the
Speaker 1: choice to be a full time mother and a full
Speaker 1: time spouse. Now, I feel we sometimes come up with
Speaker 1: new language for old ideas, and I want to be clear.
Speaker 1: If you can afford to be a full time spouse
Speaker 1: and a full time parent as a man or a woman,
Speaker 1: and you want to do that, I think that can
Speaker 1: be deeply fulfilling work. But we've got to remember that
Speaker 1: most women don't have that option. They have an economic
Speaker 1: reality that they have to wake up in the morning
Speaker 1: and leave their home to earn money. To support their families,
Speaker 1: and so again new language for old ideas trad wife.
Speaker 1: That's just telling these women that have to leave their
Speaker 1: home that it's going to harm their marriages and their kids.
Speaker 2: That's not what the data supports.
Speaker 1: We should be able to make any choice we make
Speaker 1: without putting old pressures on women in a modern workforce
Speaker 1: where that's not the economic reality they live in.
Speaker 3: President Trump has called on companies to root out what
Speaker 3: he calls illegal DEI you know, threatening federal contracts, threatening
Speaker 3: regulatory action. How is this going to be looked back on?
Speaker 3: How is history going to look back on the DEI rollback?
Speaker 1: You know, I think people didn't understand and thought that
Speaker 1: women were getting unfair treatment. But let's there are some
Speaker 1: numbers at this Women got fifty nine percent of the
Speaker 1: college degrees, and women are ten percent of fortune five
Speaker 1: hundred CEO jobs.
Speaker 2: I'm not saying there.
Speaker 1: Aren't times when people are given preferential treatment.
Speaker 2: Of course there are, what on average in our economy.
Speaker 1: Do you really think that fifty nine percent of the
Speaker 1: college degree is getting ten percent of book jobs means
Speaker 1: they're systematic special treatment for women. I mean my experience
Speaker 1: in the workforce and I think yours and a lot
Speaker 1: of people is that it was hard. It was hard
Speaker 1: to be one of the only women women in the room.
Speaker 1: And so the question is what can companies do? And
Speaker 1: I'll tell you there's a lot they can do, and
Speaker 1: it's in our report and it's completely legal. So, for example, feedback,
Speaker 1: one percent of men get style based feedback in performance
Speaker 1: reviews and sixty six percent of women.
Speaker 2: What can companies do?
Speaker 1: You establish criteria in advance that everyone agrees to that
Speaker 1: are universally applied. Everyone gets this kind of feedback that
Speaker 1: is not just legally permissible, but allowed and encouraged and
Speaker 1: creates a level playing field. This isn't about special treatment.
Speaker 1: This is about getting everyone the opportunity to do their
Speaker 1: best work and contribute.
Speaker 3: Meta is among many companies that have rolled back DEI policies,
Speaker 3: and Mark Zuckerberg reportedly blamed you for the policies being
Speaker 3: there in the first place. Some employees have felt that
Speaker 3: your legacy is being dismantled. What have your conversations been
Speaker 3: like with Mark about this. I know you're still friends
Speaker 3: and you have to have feelings about this.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's exactly what happened in that meeting,
Speaker 1: and Mark went out and.
Speaker 2: Publicly posted and clarified.
Speaker 1: But here's what I would say is that every company,
Speaker 1: including Meta, has the opportunity unity to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're fair to women. Here's what the data shows us,
Speaker 1: over and over and over again, so many examples. When
Speaker 1: a man and woman ask for raises or promotions, the
Speaker 1: woman's thirty percent more likely to be told she's too aggressive.
Speaker 2: What do you do?
Speaker 1: Standardize your processes. Every company should be doing it. So
Speaker 1: for example, interviews, if you don't have agreed upon questions,
Speaker 1: you ask naturally and maybe not on purpose, but naturally,
Speaker 1: people sometimes ask the easier questions to the men and
Speaker 1: the harder questions to the women. Just standardize your questions,
Speaker 1: put systems in place that protect people, but also that
Speaker 1: just give people the opportunity to contribute.
Speaker 3: You have to acknowledge that there's a big rhetoric shift happening,
Speaker 3: and obviously we're seeing it in Silicon Valley.
Speaker 2: We are seeing people.
Speaker 3: Tech leaders who said one thing in the last election
Speaker 3: now whispering in the president's ear. A lot of these
Speaker 3: people that you know personally, What do you think is
Speaker 3: happening here? Is this transactional? Is this just business or
Speaker 3: is this a real change in values happening.
Speaker 1: I think a lot of the rhetoric is terrible, and
Speaker 1: I think we see some of the impacts in this report.
Speaker 1: But you know, I'm fifty six, so I've been in
Speaker 1: the workforces my fourth decade, and what I see is
Speaker 1: that we make progress, we backslide, we make progress.
Speaker 2: There's a backlash.
Speaker 1: I think the reason these ideas take hold so easily
Speaker 1: is they were never really gone, even though the rhetoric
Speaker 1: is bad. Now, do I really think we ever fully
Speaker 1: encouraged leadership in little girls and little boys as and
Speaker 1: women as much as men know, So when it happens,
Speaker 1: when this rhetoric happens, it's so easy to take hold
Speaker 1: because it's like fertile ground. I'll give you one that
Speaker 1: really scares me. Eighth and tenth grade boys, middle and
Speaker 1: high school boys. They surveyed them in twenty eighteen, and
Speaker 1: they said, what do you believe women should have the
Speaker 1: same opportunities as men in the workforce?
Speaker 2: In twenty eighteen, sixty three percent. Yes.
Speaker 1: I could spend all day talking about why that's so upsetting,
Speaker 1: like where are the other thirty seven percent? But sixty
Speaker 1: three said yees, sixty two percent said yes.
Speaker 2: Today it's forty five.
Speaker 1: We are seeing that same double ditch slide in middle
Speaker 1: and high school boys believing that women should.
Speaker 2: Get equal pay. That's not okay.
Speaker 1: And what it's going to take to change that is
Speaker 1: I think people realizing that this is about economic productivity.
Speaker 1: This is about do we want our companies to succeed.
Speaker 3: You built two companies, Help build two companies that are
Speaker 3: incredibly economically productive. We are in the middle of this
Speaker 3: massive AI moment where companies are investing a lot, but
Speaker 3: it's also total chaos, it seems for you know, within
Speaker 3: and among some of the startups that are trying to
Speaker 3: build sustainable business models in an AI moment.
Speaker 2: What's your advice to companies right.
Speaker 3: Now about how they build a business model that can
Speaker 3: work and survive in the age of AI.
Speaker 2: You know, it's such a good question.
Speaker 1: And I was at Google in some of the early
Speaker 1: years and then I to Facebook now Meta, and I
Speaker 1: do think there's times when it really makes sense to
Speaker 1: invest ahead of revenue in business models. Right If Google,
Speaker 1: when I was there in the early days, had tried
Speaker 1: to cover our costs for search, we never would have
Speaker 1: gotten enough search out there to get enough user feedback
Speaker 1: to improve the search results, to get to what was
Speaker 1: a great business for Google.
Speaker 2: So it makes sense.
Speaker 1: At some point, at some level, you have to have
Speaker 1: revenue that covers costs.
Speaker 2: Is that from ads?
Speaker 1: Well, people make it so complicated. It's not complicated ready.
Speaker 1: Someone has to pay, who can pay, Businesses can pay,
Speaker 1: They can pay via advertising, they can pay via paying
Speaker 1: in some way, shape or form for database services, or
Speaker 1: people have to pay, and it will be a combination
Speaker 1: of all of these things.
Speaker 2: But over time, the revenue is going to have to
Speaker 2: cover the costs, all right.
Speaker 3: Cheryl Samberg, author of Leaning You Know, obviously help build
Speaker 3: Facebook and Google into what they are today.