I choose to watch Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders by Sheryl Sandberg.

Overall,

I liked this video a lot. As for why I chose this video, there really was no reason other than the

fact that I liked the title because it sounded interesting and possibly relatable. In one of my older

classes, we talked about how men and women are still treated unequally in the workforce, so I

was interested to see what this woman speaker had to say. After watching the video, I was pretty

surprised and had a lot of “Ah-Ha” moments. I knew back in the day that there was a lot of

inequality between women and men, but I didn’t realize that it’s still pretty bad. I knew things

have definitely improved from a long time ago. I learned in my other class, last semester, that

women weren’t allowed to buy houses, couldn’t have a credit card in their name, and were

forced into staying home. Obviously we have grown a lot since that time period, but it seems like

things are still pretty bad based off of Sandberg’s video. One crazy statistic was that there are

190 heads of state and only 9 of them are women. Also, Sandberg said the statistics haven’t

changed since 2002. I can’t believe nothing has changed over the past 17 years. The world has

already recognized the problem and therefore, it’s time to start making a change. Another thing

Sandberg said was that positive success is seen as a good thing for men and bad when women

have positive success. I’ve never thought about that before, but I can totally see that being true.

Women are so looked down upon when they do anything good because men typically think

they’re supposed to be better, but it shouldn’t be a competition. One thing I will take away from

this video is the differences between males and females in the workplace. According to

Sandberg, 57% of men negotiate their starting salary while only 7% negotiate. I think I can take

this information and negotiate and advocate for myself no matter what. Just because I’m female,

doesn’t mean I should back down on a starting salary I think I deserve. It’s kind of sad that

women feel like they can’t speak up for themselves. Due to this, I feel like men will just continue
to take advantage of this and give different salaries to men versus women, even if they have the

same credentials Another takeaway from this video is to just be myself and stand up for myself

in the workplace. In my opinion, nothing will ever change unless more and more women start

speaking up. One other thing that Sandberg mentioned had to do with having kids. She talked

about how she has 2 kids and she hasn’t stopped her from working hard and being successful.

This can be helpful in my future because I know I want to have kids. I need to make sure I don’t

let others talk me out of working and talk me into being a stay at home mom. If I had to stay at

home and do all the house chores and care for my kids all day, I think I would go crazy. Of

course being home with my kids would probably be nice, I wouldn’t be able to do it every single

day. I also want to be able to feel fulfilled in life with my work and get my own salary. If I were

in the audience and had the chance to ask Sheryl Sandberg anything, then I would probably ask a

lot. One question I would ask is why. Why are things not progressing? How do we change this?

Will it ever change? Although she probably wouldn’t have an evidence based answer, it’s most

likely something all women are thinking. We have so many statistics proving how unfair and

unequal we are treated, but nothing is changing. I think I would also be curious to just know

more statistics. The statistics she did mention were so crazy to me. I think I would also ask why

we were able to get things a little better back then but now we’re stuck where we’re at.