AND I THINK THAT’S A SHAME.’

‘ WE ARE NOT SEEING A MAJOR INCREASE IN FEMALE LEADERSHIP ...

4 years after the debut of her hit book ‘ Lean In,’ Sheryl Sandberg pushes for more progress

Sheryl Sandberg’s bestseller Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead launched a national conversation on gender in the workplace and an online community of millions of working women ready to bulldoze the barriers they face, from being paid less and promoted less frequently to carrying an uneven split of the housework and child care.

Four years later, Sandberg says working women are no better off. They are facing pushback in business and in politics, both in the U. S. and around the world.

But, Sandberg says, “the energy around equality” and the growth of Lean In circles, small support groups inspired by the book and the ongoing work of LeanIn. org to empower women and their ambitions, give her hope that change is coming, if not in the next four years, sooner than we expect.

In an interview with USA TODAY for Women’s History Month, Facebook’s No. 2 executive says she has reshaped some of her thinking on feminism in the workplace after being criticized for only speaking to a very specific group of women — highly educated, skilled professionals frequently privileged by their race — and excluding many lower- income women, women of color and single mothers.

And, she says, the election of Donald Trump has made the drive for workplace equality as urgent as ever. Topping her agenda: equal pay, a hike in the federal minimum wage, paid family leave and maternity leave. The interview has been condensed and edited. Q: It has been four years since the publication of Lean In. Are we better off or worse off four years later?

A: In terms of women in leadership roles, we are not better off. We are stuck at less than 6% of the Fortune 500 CEO jobs and their equivalent in almost every country in the world. There were 19 countries run by women when Lean In was published. Today there are 11. Congressional numbers have inched up a tiny bit. And so, overall, we are not seeing a major increase in female leadership in any industry or in any government in the world, and I think that’s a shame.

The Lean In Community is thriving, and that gives me hope that this will change in the future. We have 1.5 million members of our community, 33,000 circles in 150 countries, and we’re growing by almost 100 a week. And we know that when people join circles, the great majority of them will do something that is much more ambitious for themselves.

The fact that there is so much energy around equality around the world and the fact that so many women are in circles gives me hope that this will change in the future. Q: What progress do you hope to see women achieve, and what will be the singlebiggest factor in propelling that progress?

A: My goal is very clear, and I wrote about it in Lean In, which is that women run half our companies and countries and men run half our homes. As much as I wish that could happen in four years, I don’t think that’s a likely time period. But I think it can happen sooner than we think. Part of it is having that aspiration and that goal. I think we too often suffer from the tyranny of low expectations.

Q: What have you learned since you published Lean In? You came under some criticism for being tone- deaf to your privilege as a wealthy, white, married woman with a big support system. How has that criticism reshaped your thinking on feminism and the workplace? ( Sandberg’s husband, Dave Goldberg, died suddenly of a heart ailment in 2015).

A: I posted publicly on Mother’s Day last year that I think I didn’t fully appreciate what it was to be a single mother. I certainly wrote about it in Lean In, but I also wrote a whole chapter called “Make Your Partner a Real Partner,” which for people who didn’t have one must have been very hard to read.

I have thought a lot about what it is to be a single mother because now I am one. And financially, I don’t face the struggles that so many do.

Thirty- seven percent of single mothers are living in poverty, 40% if you are black or Latina. That’s unacceptable.

FILE PHOTO BY LAURA CAVANAUGH, GETTY IMAGES FOR AWXII Sheryl Sandberg speaks in 2015, months after her husband died. His death has affected her views on parenthood.

AP The Facebook COO says she has reshaped some of her thinking on feminism in the past few years.