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Corporate America thinks if 10% of its leaders are women, that's good enough, according to new research from Sheryl Sandberg's Lean In organization.
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Sandberg says that too many male leaders are blind to disrespectful treatment of women, too.
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Sandberg hasn't fully solved the diversity problem at Facebook, where she is COO, either.
(Sheryl SandbergGetty Images)
Too many corporate leaders think that sprinkling a few women into the ranks here and there is all they need to do have a diverse workforce, Sheryl Sandberg says.
"Nearly 50% of men think that when just 1 in 10 senior leaders in their company is a woman, that’s sufficient. And remarkably, a third of women agree. When so many people see a leadership team that’s only 10% women—who, let’s remember, are half the population—and think, 'That’s good enough,' it’s a sign that we’re too comfortable with the status quo," Sandberg wrote in an Op Ed for the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday.
She was remarking on a finding of the new 2017 Women in the Workplace report, a joint study by Sandberg's Lean In's organization and McKinsey & Co. released on Tuesday.
Sandberg is known as the tech industry's most visible feminist, having launched her Lean In organization by way of a best-selling book back in 2013.
Beyond the scant number of women in leadership roles, Sandberg also railed against the lack of people of color in leadership roles, particularly Black women, but also Asians and Latinas.
Sandberg quoted one Black woman from the workplace report who said: “We can have the same degree, the same years of work…[but] we are not tapped on our shoulders as often as other folks are. And we’re not getting feedback on why.”
Doctor, heal thyself?
We can't help pointing out that there's some irony to Sandberg's opinions. While she's doing great work to bring high-level attention to the lack of workforce equality, she's also the chief operating officer at Facebook. That means operating tasks like hiring fall in her domain.
(VC Peter Thiel is one of the board members on Facebook's mostly male board.AGON Limited)
And Facebook's own track record here isn't exactly role model material. In August the company released its annual diversity report. While Facebook is among the most diverse work force in the tech industry, that's not saying much.
The company is still nowhere near achieving the kind of diversity balance she's pushing the whole corporate world to achieve.
For instance, just under one-third of Facebook's new hires for engineering jobs are women. In a world where women often make up around 17% of the tech roles at tech companies, that's a move in the right direction. But it also means that two-thirds of new engineering hires are still men. That's not exactly 50/50, even in new hiring. Overall, women still make up only 19% of Facebook's tech roles.