Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg on Women Leaders

If you are a woman who has or wants a job or a career, watch this. If you are a man who wants to support the women in your life who work or want to work outside the home, watch this.

There's nothing new in this speech, but she raises some important points really well.

Here's a sample:

Women systematically underestimate their own abilities... Women do not negotiate for themselves in the workforce... And most importantly, men attribute their success to themselves and women to other external factors.

Here's more:

I think as a society we put more pressure on our boys to succeed than we do on our girls. I know that men stay home and work at home to support their wives in their careers, and it's hard... 

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 the stage?--they know each other more in a biblical sense as well. 

(I'm not surprised at the last bit: I've seen opinions on blogs that women would have more energy for sex if their partners took up more housework!)

Watch the bit about the young woman who met Sandberg at the end of one of her talks and said she learned she needed to keep her hand up.

Seriously, watch it all.

Let's all keep our hands up. Let's all try harder until there are more women in the workplace, more women colleagues to work with, more women bosses to work for, more female role models to look up to.