Lean In Part 9

As Gloria Steinem observed, "Whoever has power takes over the noun-and the norm-while the less powerful get an adjective."1 Since no one wants to be perceived as less powerful, a lot of women reject the gender identification and insist, "I don't see myself as a woman; I see myself as a novelist/athlete/professional/fill-in-the-blank." They are right to do so. No one wants her achievements modified. We all just want to be the noun. Yet the world has a way of reminding women that they are women, and girls that they are girls.

In between my junior and senior years of high school, I worked as a page in Washington, D.C., for my hometown congressman, William Lehman. The Speaker of the House at the time was the legendary Ma.s.sachusetts representative Tip O'Neill, and Congressman Lehman promised to introduce me to him before the summer ended. But as the days ticked by, it didn't happen. And it didn't happen. Then, on the very last day of the session, he made good on his promise. In the hall outside the House floor, he pulled me over to meet Speaker O'Neill. I was nervous, but Congressman Lehman put me at ease by introducing me in the nicest way possible, telling the Speaker that I had worked hard all summer. The Speaker looked at me, then reached over and patted my head. He turned to the congressman and remarked, "She's pretty." Then he turned his attention back to me and asked just one question: "Are you a pom-pom girl?"

I was crushed. Looking back, I know his words were intended to flatter me, but in the moment, I felt belittled. I wanted to be recognized for the work I had done. I reacted defensively. "No," I replied. "I study too much for that." Then a wave of terror struck me for speaking up to the man who was third in line for the presidency. But no one seemed to register my curt and not-at-all clever response. The Speaker just patted me on the head-again!-and moved along. My congressman beamed.

Even to my teenage self, this s.e.xism seemed retro. The Speaker was born in 1912, eight years before women were given the right to vote, but by the time I met him in the halls of Congress, society had (mostly) evolved. It was obvious that a woman could do anything a man could do. My childhood was filled with firsts-Golda Meir in Israel, Geraldine Ferraro on the Mondale ticket, Sandra Day O'Connor on the Supreme Court, Sally Ride in s.p.a.ce.

Given all these strides, I headed into college believing that the feminists of the sixties and seventies had done the hard work of achieving equality for my generation. And yet, if anyone had called me a feminist, I would have quickly corrected that notion. This reaction is prevalent even today according to sociologist Marianne Cooper (who also contributed her extraordinary research a.s.sistance to this book). In her 2011 article, "The New F-Word," Marianne wrote about college English professor Michele Elam, who observed something strange in her Introduction to Feminist Studies course. Even though her students were interested enough in gender equality to take an entire cla.s.s on the subject, very few "felt comfortable using the word 'feminism.' " And even "fewer identified themselves as feminists." As Professor Elam noted, it was as if "being called a feminist was to suspect that some foul epithet had been hurled your way."2

It sounds like a joke: Did you hear the one about the woman taking a feminist studies cla.s.s who got angry when someone called her a feminist? But when I was in college, I embraced the same contradiction. On one hand, I started a group to encourage more women to major in economics and government. On the other hand, I would have denied being in any way, shape, or form a feminist. None of my college friends thought of themselves as feminists either. It saddens me to admit that we did not see the backlash against women around us.3 We accepted the negative caricature of a bra-burning, humorless, man-hating feminist. She was not someone we wanted to emulate, in part because it seemed like she couldn't get a date. Horrible, I know-the sad irony of rejecting feminism to get male attention and approval. In our defense, my friends and I truly, if navely, believed that the world did not need feminists anymore. We mistakenly thought that there was nothing left to fight for.

I carried this att.i.tude with me when I entered the workforce. I figured if s.e.xism still existed, I would just prove it wrong. I would do my job and do it well. What I didn't know at the time was that ignoring the issue is a cla.s.sic survival technique. Within traditional inst.i.tutions, success has often been contingent upon a woman not speaking out but fitting in, or more colloquially, being "one of the guys." The first women to enter corporate America dressed in manly suits with b.u.t.ton-down shirts. One veteran banking executive told me that she wore her hair in a bun for ten years because she did not want anyone to notice she was a woman. While styles have relaxed, women still worry about sticking out too much. I know an engineer at a tech start-up who removes her earrings before going to work so coworkers won't be reminded that she is-shhh!-not a man.

Early in my career, my gender was rarely noted (except for the occasional client who wanted to fix me up with his son). Manly suits were no longer in fashion, and I neither hid nor emphasized femininity. I have never reported directly to a woman-not once in my entire career. There were higher-level women at the places I worked, but I wasn't close enough to see how they dealt with this issue on a daily basis. I was never invited to attend a single meeting that discussed gender, and there were no special programs for women that I can recall. That all seemed fine. We were fitting in, and there was no reason to call attention to ourselves.

But while gender was not openly acknowledged, it was still lurking below the surface. I started to see differences in att.i.tudes toward women. I started noticing how often employees were judged not by their objective performance, but by the subjective standard of how well they fit in. Given that the summer outing at McKinsey was a deep-sea fishing trip and most company dinners ended with whiskey sipping and cigar smoking, I sometimes struggled to pa.s.s the "fitting in" test. One night, encouraged by the male partners, I puffed away on a cigar-just one of the guys. Except that the smoking nauseated me and I reeked of cigar smoke for days. If that was fitting in, I stuck out.

Others also seemed aware that I was not one of the guys. When I was named the Treasury Department's chief of staff in 1999, several people remarked to me, "It must have helped that you were a woman." It was infuriating. Their intent may not have been malicious, but the implication was clear: I had not gotten the job on merit. I also figured that for every person pointing out my "advantage" to my face, there were probably a dozen others saying it less politely behind my back. I considered my possible responses. I could explain that the last time I checked there was no affirmative action for women at Treasury. I could mention that my credentials lined up with those of the men who had previously held this position. If there was enough time, I could recount centuries of discrimination against women. Or I could just slap the person across the face. I tried all these options at least once. Okay, not the slap. But of the responses I did try, none of them worked.

It was a no-win situation. I couldn't deny being a woman; even if I tried, people would still figure it out. And defending myself just made me seem ... defensive. My gut and the signals I received from others cautioned me that arguing the issue would make me sound like a strident feminist. And I still did not want that. I also worried that pointing out the disadvantages women face in the workforce might be misinterpreted as whining or asking for special treatment. So I ignored the comments. I put my head down and worked hard.

Then, as the years ticked by, I started seeing female friends and colleagues drop out of the workforce. Some left by choice. Others left out of frustration, pushed out the door by companies that did not allow flexibility and welcomed home by partners who weren't doing their share of the housework and child rearing. Others remained but scaled back their ambitions to meet outsized demands. I watched as the promise my generation had for female leadership dwindled. By the time I had been at Google for a few years, I realized that the problem wasn't going away. So even though the thought still scared me, I decided it was time to stop putting my head down and to start speaking out.

Fortunately, I had company. In 2005, my colleagues Susan Wojcicki and Marissa Mayer and I all noticed that the speakers who visited the Google campus were fascinating, notable, and almost always male. In response, we founded [email protected] and kicked off the new series with luminaries Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda, who were launching the Women's Media Center. As a former aerobics instructor, I was excited to meet Jane Fonda-and sucked in my stomach the whole time. From what I knew about the women's rights movement, I expected Gloria Steinem to be formidable and brilliant, which she was. But she was also charming and funny and warm-the absolute opposite of my childish image of the humorless feminist.

After the [email protected] event, Gloria invited me to speak at the Women's Media Center in New York. I said yes without hesitating. The day before the talk, I headed to the airport with Kim Malone Scott, who ran the Google publishing teams. Kim is an experienced writer, so I figured she would help me craft a speech during the long flight. By the time I got through all of my backlogged e-mails, it was almost midnight. I turned to Kim for help and saw that she had fallen asleep. Long before Facebook made it popular, I thought about giving her a poke. But I couldn't bear to wake her up. Staring at the blank computer screen, I was at a complete loss. I had never spoken about being a woman in public before. Not once. I had no talking points or notes to turn to. Then I realized how striking this was ... and that I actually had quite a lot to say.

I began my talk the next day by explaining that in business we are taught to fit in, but that I was starting to think this might not be the right approach. I said out loud that there are differences between men and women both in their behavior and in the way their behavior is perceived by others. I admitted that I could see these dynamics playing out in the workforce, and that, in order to fix the problems, we needed to be able to talk about gender without people thinking we were crying for help, asking for special treatment, or about to sue. A lot poured out of me that day. Then I returned to Northern California and put the conversation on hold.

In the following four years, I gave two talks on women in the workplace, both behind closed doors to professional women's groups at nearby Stanford. Then one day, Pat Mitch.e.l.l called to tell me that she was launching TEDWomen and invited me to speak on social media. I told her I had another subject in mind and started pulling together a talk on how women can succeed in the workforce (a talk that TED later named "Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders"). Very quickly, I became excited. And just as quickly, I learned that no one else shared my excitement. Friends and colleagues-both male and female-warned me that making this speech would harm my career by instantly typecasting me as a female COO and not a real business executive. In other words, I wouldn't be blending in.

I worried they might be right. Speaking at TED would be different from my previous keynotes. Although I would be addressing a sympathetic room, the talk would be posted on the web, where anyone could watch, and judge, and criticize.

Inside Facebook, few people noticed my TEDTalk, and those who did responded positively. But outside of Facebook, the criticism started to roll in. One of my colleagues from Treasury called to say that "others"-not him, of course-were wondering why I gave more speeches on women's issues than on Facebook. I had been at the company for two and a half years and given countless speeches on rebuilding marketing around the social graph and exactly one speech on gender. Someone else asked me, "So is this your thing now?"

At the time, I didn't know how to respond. Now I would say yes. I made this my "thing" because we need to disrupt the status quo. Staying quiet and fitting in may have been all the first generations of women who entered corporate America could do; in some cases, it might still be the safest path. But this strategy is not paying off for women as a group. Instead, we need to speak out, identify the barriers that are holding women back, and find solutions.

The response to my TEDTalk showed me that addressing these issues openly can make a difference. Women forwarded the video to their friends, colleagues, daughters, and sisters. I began receiving e-mails and letters from women all over the world who wanted to share their stories of how they gained the courage to reach for more opportunities, sit at more tables, and believe more in themselves.

One of my favorite letters came from Sabeen Virani, a consultant in Dubai and the only woman in an office of more than three hundred employees. She responded to my story about the executive who could not point me to the women's bathroom because, as she explained, in her workplace, the women's bathroom did not even exist. Sabeen described how during her first week on the project, the client took her team out to dinner, but she couldn't join because the restaurant didn't allow women. Talk about not sitting at the table-she couldn't even get into the restaurant! Some of the men were openly hostile to Sabeen. Others just ignored her. But rather than give up and transfer to a friendlier office, she decided that she could demonstrate to everyone that women are competent professionals. In the end, she won her coworkers over and the client converted a bathroom into a women's bathroom just for her. She sent me a photo of her standing in front of a door with a printed sign that read simply and powerfully "Toilets for women only."

It was also enormously gratifying that men reacted positively to the talk too. Dr. John Probasco of the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine told me that my story about women being more reluctant than men to raise their hands rang true for him so he decided to do away with the old hand-raising system during rounds. Instead, he started calling on male and female students evenly. He quickly realized that the women knew the answers just as well-or even better-than the men. In one day he increased female partic.i.p.ation. By making one small change to his behavior, he changed a much larger dynamic.

Major changes can result from these kinds of "nudge techniques," small interventions that encourage people to behave in slightly different ways at critical moments.4 The simple act of talking openly about behavioral patterns makes the subconscious conscious. For example, Google has an unusual system where engineers nominate themselves for promotions, and the company found that men nominated themselves more quickly than women. The Google management team shared this data openly with the female employees, and women's self-nomination rates rose significantly, reaching roughly the same rates as men's.

All the feedback from TED convinced me that I should keep speaking up and encouraging others to do the same. It is essential to breaking the logjam. Talking can transform minds, which can transform behaviors, which can transform inst.i.tutions.

I know it isn't easy. Anyone who brings up gender in the workplace is wading into deep and muddy waters. The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same. Women, especially those at junior levels, worry that raising gender issues makes them appear unprofessional or as if they are blaming others. I have listened to women vent frustration over being undervalued and even demeaned on a daily basis at work. When I ask if they have aired any of these complaints to their superiors, they've responded, "Oh no! I couldn't." There is so much fear that speaking up will make the situation worse or even result in being penalized or fired. It seems safer to bear the injustice.

For men, raising this subject can be even harder. A male friend who runs a large organization once confided in me, "It's easier to talk about your s.e.x life in public than to talk about gender." The fact that he wouldn't go on record with this quote shows he meant it. Vittorio Colao, CEO of Vodafone, told me that he showed my TEDTalk to his senior management team because he shares my belief that women sometimes hold themselves back. He also believed this message was easier to hear from a woman than a man. His point is valid. If a man had delivered the same message or even gently pointed out that women might be taking actions that limited their options, he would have been pilloried.

Shutting down discussion is self-defeating and impedes progress. We need to talk and listen and debate and refute and instruct and learn and evolve. And since the majority of managers are men, we need them to feel comfortable addressing these issues directly with female employees. When a woman sits on the side of a room, a man needs to be able to wave her over to the table and explain why so she will know to sit at the table the next time.

Ken Chenault, CEO of American Express, is a leader on this front. Ken openly acknowledges that in meetings, both men and women are more likely to interrupt a woman and give credit to a man for an idea first proposed by a woman. When he witnesses either of these behaviors, he stops the meeting to point it out. Coming from the top, this really makes employees think twice. A more junior woman (or man) can also intervene in the situation when a female colleague has been interrupted. She can gently but firmly tell the group, "Before we move on, I'd like to hear what [senior woman] had to say." This action not only benefits the senior woman but can raise the stature of the junior woman as well, since speaking up for someone else displays both confidence and a communal spirit. The junior woman comes across as both competent and nice.

At Facebook, I teach managers to encourage women to talk about their plans to have children and help them continue to reach for opportunities. I give men the option of quoting me if the words don't feel right coming out of their mouths. Still, this approach is a bit of a crutch and it does not translate to other companies. It would be preferable if everyone had permission to talk about this subject both publicly and behind closed office doors.

One stumbling block is that many people believe that the workplace is largely a meritocracy, which means we look at individuals, not groups, and determine that differences in outcomes must be based on merit, not gender. Men at the top are often unaware of the benefits they enjoy simply because they're men, and this can make them blind to the disadvantages a.s.sociated with being a woman. Women lower down also believe that men at the top are ent.i.tled to be there, so they try to play by the rules and work harder to advance rather than raise questions or voice concerns about the possibility of bias. As a result, everyone becomes complicit in perpetuating an unjust system.

At the same time, we must be careful not to inject gender into every discussion. I know a male CEO who is enormously dedicated to hiring and promoting women. When a female employee kicked off a negotiation by insisting that she should have a higher t.i.tle and was underleveled because she was a woman, it immediately put him on the defense. She was speaking her truth, but in this case, her truth was an accusation with legal ramifications. As soon as she framed the issue in those terms, the CEO had no choice but to put their friendly talks on hold and call in HR. It might have served her better to explain how she was contributing to the company and ask for the promotion first.

Even today, mentioning gender in work situations often makes people visibly uncomfortable. To their credit, many inst.i.tutions have worked hard to sensitize people to these issues, especially s.e.xual hara.s.sment. But while human resources seminars can raise consciousness and help protect employees, they have also raised the specter of legal action, which can create real barriers to these conversations. The federal and state laws that are designed to protect employees against discrimination specify only that an employer cannot make decisions based on certain protected characteristics such as gender, pregnancy, and age. But companies usually take the policy a step further and teach managers not to ask anything related to these areas. Anyone making even a benign inquiry such as "Are you married?" or "Do you have kids?" can later be accused of basing a personnel decision on this information. As a result, a manager who is trying to help a female employee by pointing out a gender-driven style difference could be charged with discrimination for doing so.

The first time I asked a prospective employee if she was considering having children soon, I understood that doing so could expose me and my company to legal risk. Unlike many women, I was in a position to evaluate that risk and chose to take it. The laws that protect women and minorities and people with disabilities, among others, from discrimination are essential, and I am not suggesting they be circ.u.mvented. But I have also witnessed firsthand how they can have a chilling effect on discourse, sometimes even to the detriment of the people they are designed to defend. I don't have a solution to this dilemma and will leave it to public policy and legal experts to solve. I do think this is worth some serious attention so we can find a way to deal with these issues in a way that protects but doesn't suppress.

Most people would agree that gender bias exists ... in others. We, however, would never be swayed by such superficial and unenlightened opinions. Except we are. Our preconceived notions about masculinity and femininity influence how we interact with and evaluate colleagues in the workplace. A 2012 study found that when evaluating identical resumes for a lab manager position from a male student and a female student, scientists of both s.e.xes gave better marks to the male applicant. Even though the students had the same qualifications and experience, the scientists deemed the female student less competent and offered her a lower starting salary and less mentoring.5 Other studies of job applicants, candidates for scholarships, and musicians auditioning for orchestras have come to the same conclusion: gender bias influences how we view performance and typically raises our a.s.sessment of men while lowering our a.s.sessment of women.6 Even today, gender-blind evaluations still result in better outcomes for women.7 Unfortunately, most jobs require face-to-face interviews.

All of us, myself included, are biased, whether we admit it or not. And thinking that we are objective can actually make this even worse, creating what social scientists call a "bias blind spot." This blind spot causes people to be too confident about their own powers of objectivity so that they fail to correct for bias.8 When evaluating identically described male and female candidates for the job of police chief, respondents who claimed to be the most impartial actually exhibited more bias in favor of male candidates. This is not just counterproductive but deeply dangerous. Evaluators in that same study actually shifted hiring criteria to give men an advantage. When a male applicant possessed a strong educational record, that quality was considered critical to the success of a police chief. But when a male applicant possessed a weaker educational record, that quality was rated as less important. This favoritism was not shown to female applicants. If anything, the reverse happened. When a woman possessed a particular skill, ability, or background, that quality tended to carry less weight. The infuriating takeaway from this study is that "merit" can be manipulated to justify discrimination.9

Social scientists are uncovering new examples of bias all the time. In 2012, a series of studies compared men in more "modern" marriages (whose wives worked outside the home full-time) to men in more "traditional" marriages (whose wives worked at home). The researchers wanted to determine if a man's home arrangement affected his professional behavior. It did. Compared to men in modern marriages, men in more traditional marriages viewed the presence of women in the workforce less favorably. They also denied promotions to qualified female employees more often and were more likely to think that companies with a higher percentage of female employees ran less smoothly. The researchers speculated that men in traditional marriages are not overtly hostile toward women but instead are "benevolent s.e.xists"-holding positive yet outdated views about women.10 (Another term I have heard is "nice guy misogynists.") These men might even believe that women have superior strengths in certain areas like moral reasoning, which makes them better equipped to raise children-and perhaps less equipped to succeed in business.11 In all likelihood, men who share this att.i.tude are unaware of how their conscious and unconscious beliefs hurt their female colleagues.

Another bias arises from our tendency to want to work with people who are like us. Innovisor, a consulting firm, conducted research in twenty-nine countries and found that when men and women select a colleague to collaborate with, both were significantly more likely to choose someone of the same gender.12 Yet diverse groups often perform better.13 Armed with this information, managers should take a more active role in mixing and matching when a.s.signing teams. Or, at the very least, managers should point out this tendency to give employees the motivation to shake things up.

My own attempts to point out gender bias have generated more than my fair share of eye rolling from others. At best, people are open to scrutinizing themselves and considering their blind spots; at worst, they become defensive and angry. One common instance of bias crops up during job performance evaluations. When reviewing a woman, the reviewer will often voice the concern, "While she's really good at her job, she's just not as well liked by her peers." When I hear language like that, I bring up the Heidi/Howard study and how success and likeability are negatively correlated for women. I ask the evaluator to consider the possibility that this successful female may be paying a gender-based penalty. Usually people find the study credible, nodding their heads in agreement, but then bristle at the suggestion that this might be influencing the reaction of their management team. They will further defend their position by arguing that it cannot be gender related because-aha!-both men and women have problems with that particular female executive. But the success and likeability penalty is imposed by both men and women. Women perpetuate this bias as well.

Of course, not every woman deserves to be well liked. Some women are disliked for behaviors that they would do well to change. In a perfect world, they would receive constructive feedback and the opportunity to make those changes. Still, calling attention to this bias forces people to think about whether there is a real problem or a perception problem. The goal is to give women something men tend to receive automatically-the benefit of the doubt.

In turn, women might also want to give their bosses the benefit of the doubt. Cynthia Hogan served as chief counsel for the Senate Judiciary Committee under then-senator Joe Biden before leaving in 1996 after her first child was born. Her plan was to return to the workforce a few years later. But when her second child was born prematurely, those plans changed. A full twelve years later, Vice PresidentElect Biden called Cynthia to ask her to join his staff as chief legal counsel in the White House. "My first reaction was that I no longer owned any clothes other than yoga pants!" Cynthia said. But her larger concern was whether she could manage the long hours in the White House and still see her family. She put it beautifully: "I knew that whether this would work depended on two men. So first I asked my husband if he could step in and take on more of the responsibility for the kids. He said, 'Of course, it's your turn.' And then I told the Vice Presidentelect that I really wanted to have dinner with my kids most nights. And his response was, 'Well, you have a phone and I can call you when I need you after dinnertime.' "14

Cynthia believes that the lesson of her story is "Don't be afraid to ask," even if it seems like a long shot. Being offered a senior job, especially after being at home for so long, presented a great opportunity. Many women would have accepted it without even trying to carve out the time they needed for their families. Others would have turned it down, a.s.suming that having dinner at home most nights was not negotiable. Being forthright led to opportunity.

Every job will demand some sacrifice. The key is to avoid unnecessary sacrifice. This is especially hard since our work culture values complete dedication. We worry that even mentioning other priorities makes us less valuable employees. I have faced this too. As I described, once I had children, I changed my working hours to be home for dinner. But only fairly recently did I start talking about this change. And while the impact of my actually leaving work early was negligible, admitting that I went home at five thirty turned out to be kind of a big deal.

I first openly discussed my office hours at the launch of Facebook Women, an in-house resource group. The initial meeting, run by Lori Goler and Facebook's head of engineering, Mike Schroepfer, was open to any Facebook employee, including men. During the Q&A, I was asked the (inevitable) question about how I balanced my job and family. I talked about leaving work to have dinner with my children and then getting back online after they went to bed. I said that I was sharing my schedule because I wanted to encourage others to personalize their schedules too. Even though I had planned in advance to discuss this, I felt nervous. Years of conditioning had taught me never to suggest that I was doing anything other than giving 100 percent to my job. It was scary to think that someone, even people working for me, might doubt my diligence or dedication. Fortunately, it didn't happen. A few people at Facebook thanked me for mentioning it, but that was it.

A few years later, producer Dyllan McGee interviewed me for her Makers video series. We spoke on a wide range of subjects, including my daily work schedule. The video was posted to the web and was instantly the subject of heated debate. Thanks to social media (serves me right), everyone had an opinion about my leaving the office at five thirty. I got flowers with an anonymous thank-you note. Mike Callahan, Yahoo's general counsel at the time, told me that several of the more senior women in his legal department said my admission struck a chord and they were going to follow my example. Author Ken Auletta said that I could not have gotten more headlines if I had murdered someone with an ax. While I was glad to jump-start the discussion, all the attention gave me this weird feeling that someone was going to object and fire me. I had to rea.s.sure myself that this was absurd. Still, the clamor made me realize how incredibly hard it would be for someone in a less-senior position to ask for or admit to this schedule. We have a long way to go before flextime is accepted in most workplaces. It will only happen if we keep raising the issue.

The discussions may be difficult, but the positives are many. We cannot change what we are unaware of, and once we are aware, we cannot help but change.

Even a well-established inst.i.tution like Harvard Business School (HBS) can evolve rapidly when issues are addressed head-on. Historically at HBS, American male students have academically outperformed both female and international students. When Nitin Nohria was appointed dean in 2010, he made it his mission to close this gap. He began by appointing Youngme Moon as senior a.s.sociate dean of the MBA program, the first woman to hold that position in the school's century-plus history. He also created a new position for Robin Ely, an expert on gender and diversity.

a.s.sociate Dean Moon, working with Professor Frances Frei, spent the first year rigorously examining the school's culture. They visited each cla.s.sroom and discussed the challenges women and international students faced. Then they used that knowledge to create what Dean Nohria calls "a level of mindfulness." Without calling for major overhauls, they tackled the soft stuff-small adjustments students could make immediately, like paying more attention to the language they used in cla.s.s. They laid out a new, communal definition of leadership: "Leadership is about making others better as a result of your presence and making sure that impact lasts in your absence." They held students responsible for the impact their behavior had on others. Those who violated that principle, or even hosted an event where that principle was violated, were held accountable. The second year, HBS introduced small group projects to encourage collaboration between cla.s.smates who would not naturally work together. They also added a year-long field course, which plays to the strengths of students who are less comfortable contributing in front of large cla.s.ses.

By commencement, the performance gap had virtually disappeared. Men, women, and international students were represented proportionally in the honors awarded. There was another benefit too. In a result many considered surprising, overall student satisfaction went up, not just for the female and international students, but for American males as well. By creating a more equal environment, everyone was happier. And all of this was accomplished in just two short years.15

Social gains are never handed out. They must be seized. Leaders of the women's movement-from Susan B. Anthony to Jane Addams to Alice Paul to Bella Abzug to Flo Kennedy to so many others-spoke out loudly and bravely to demand the rights that we now have. Their courage changed our culture and our laws to the benefit of us all. Looking back, it made no sense for my college friends and me to distance ourselves from the hard-won achievements of earlier feminists. We should have cheered their efforts. Instead, we lowered our voices, thinking the battle was over, and with this reticence we hurt ourselves.

Now I proudly call myself a feminist. If Tip O'Neill were alive today, I might even tell him that I'm a pom-pom girl for feminism. I hope more women, and men, will join me in accepting this distinguished label. Currently, only 24 percent of women in the United States say that they consider themselves feminists. Yet when offered a more specific definition of feminism-"A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the s.e.xes"-the percentage of women who agree rises to 65 percent.16 That's a big move in the right direction.