Facebook COO urges action to narrow gender wage gap
LONDON: Facebook Inc chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg on Sunday called on governments and companies to do more to close the gender pay gap, and said both girls and boys should be encouraged to become leaders from an early age.
“We need to start paying women well and we need the public policy and the corporate policy to get there,” she told the BBC.
“But certainly women applying for jobs at the same rate as men, women running for office at the same rate as men, that’s got to be part of the answer.”
The issue of women earning less than men arose again earlier this month, when the BBC was forced to reveal the pay of its journalists and presenters.
Men earning more than £150,000 (RM843,349) a year outnumbered women two to one, and the broadcaster’s top-ranking man received more than four times the amount of its highestpaid woman.
Sandberg, one of the most influential Silicon Valley executives and the author of the 2013 book “Lean In”, said women undervalued the contribution they could make in business.
“We start telling little girls not to lead at a very young ages and we start telling little boys to lead at a very young age, and that’s a mistake,” she said.
“I believe everyone has inside them the ability to lead and we should let people choose that, not based on gender but on who they are and who they want to be.”