With a nonprofit she founded to close the gender gap in technology. Her commitment to Technology Helped her launch a National Movement to center her commitment to economic recovery and her policy that supports moms. Gender equality is at the heart of this. The pandemic made it clear to her and millions of women that workplaces were never built for working mothers to have a fair chance and that is why we saw historic number of women leave their jobs in 2021, highlighting that it is the system that needs to be fixed. They offer a plan to educate corporate leaders, advocate for policy reform and reimagine our workplaces. She will be having this conversation with the executive editor of the Washington Post, the first woman to lead the 140 fouryearold news organization. Previously, she was the executive editor and senior vp of the associated press. Later we will take some of your questions and you can submit those using the q and a button at the bottom of your window. We are including a link to purchase copies of the book with autographs in the checkbox. Thanks for joining us. Please give a warm welcome to both of them into your homes. Hi hi everyone, it is great to be with all of you and thank you for joining us today. It is so nice to see you again even if it is virtually like this and talk to you about all of these important issues you are raising in this new book. Thank you, sally. I know a lot is happening in life and the world so for you to take the time to be here to talk about women and working women means a lot for everything will person who is participating. Thank you, that is very kind. There is no more important issue in our world. The title of the book is pay up the future of women and work and how it is different than you think. How is it different . Workplaces never made from women. Millions of women have left the workforce. The largest exodus of women leaving the workforce. Many women say they are anxious and depressed. The groups that are the most at risk are 18 to 24yearolds and moms. So we have this opportunity to finally make workplaces work for us. Because they never have. You right in the book that there is anything there is a feeling we are colluding with our own erasure. We are squeezed or do we squeeze ourselves into a guilt cone, with the contradictory demands of childrearing and professional ambition. Because wasnt having it all what we asked for . Im curious what you think this all came to a head during the pandemic. Was it always happening . Why did it come to the head and the pandemic . I think it was always happening. I did my book party with Hillary Clinton and she was talking about this. Ever since she entered the workforce, she said dont have pictures of your kids, dont talk about your motherhood. So the only way we could show up at work was hiding half of ourselves. The problem is that corporate feminism bought into this. I bought into this. I spent the past decade telling girls to lean in, grow boss her way to the top. And covid, i found myself with two little kids running an organization and it broke me. And i have resources. So we learned that having it all is really a euphemism for doing it all. It was something about covid, whether being at home for our kids, zoom schooling, knowing we would be the beneficiaries of that work. And no one cared. So the way we have been doing it, telling women to get a sponsor, colorcode their calendar, that was not getting us to equality. We were fighting the wrong fight. The fight we should have been fighting is how do we get to equality at home . How do we create structures so we can stop trying to fix the woman and fix the system . Yes, that idea of fixing the woman versus the system is very much at the heart of this. Many of us are asked how do you do what you do is if we are somehow superhero people who if they could figure out what we do to work, many of us would get asked that question and was that a good bit of advice . So talk to me a little bit about that, do people approach you with that . I need to change to make this work . Is that something you hear . All the time. I why women show up, i spend my life tried to get more girls in technology and the amount of women at m. I. T. , phd, the last question they will ask is i feel a guy dont belong here. Why my exhausted . And its when they are doing two thirds of the caregiving work. I think we thought that was the way. I have spent almost a decade trying to have a baby. When i finally did, i was on two planes into two trains every week trying to build the movement. I do not see him take his first steps, i do not seem crawl, i do not hear him say his first words. And i would look at myself in the mirror and say that is the price you have to pay for changing the world. And that should not be a price we have to pay. If we want to work or make a difference. So what we have been doing has come at a huge cost. I think where it is showing up right now is not even just for labor market and the numbers of women in the workforce. It is the Mental Health peace that should terrify all of us. Are there any companies who are doing it right . Is there anything you see on a private level, that is helpful or hopeful for the future . I think there are companies who have done a little better in the pandemic. I worry were going backwards, though. Once we get everybody returned to the office. But yeah, Companies Like disney and patagonia have onsite daycare to help with childcare issues. There are more companies that are offering paid leave and benefits and sixday benefits. There are some companies that have pushed back against flexibility and Remote Working and say we are going to make it possible for people to work wherever it works for them. So i think there is a trend. What i worry about is there are also trends that go back to the old normal. From our president , joe biden to my mayor eric adams to say get out of your pajamas and go to work. We are still not talking about the fact that the latest jobs numbers, 27 times more men enter the job market and we are still missing millions of women. And black women have the lowest Unemployment Rate in 50 years. It is all about a lot about the cost of childcare. What would a new definition of working motherhood look like for different groups . Obviously there are privileged white women, women of color. How would you think through or think about what this means for different groups and women with different Life Experiences at this moment in time . Three out of 10 American Families are missing a mom. When i think about when i built it, i went to refugee camps. I which of the poorest communities and i said i can teach her, i can teach anybody. When we get to workplaces, we designed them for white men who had a partner staying at home doing the domestic work. We did not design them for a single mom, isnt a woman of color that is an hourly wage worker. And we need to. We have an opportunity to do that right now. I think companies should be providing the same paid leave benefits across the board. If you have women in factories and the front office, they should get the same benefits. It should not matter the color of your skin or how much money you make, an indicator of how you get to spend time with your kids and raise your kids. That is fundamentally broken in our country. It should not be about privilege. That is dictating your ability to have a job or be a mother. But the u. S. Has long been an outlier on health care in general. The system you described happens in some countries, maybe not perfectly but it happens. Do you have a plan for moms . What would be a realistic step forward . In the United States . What are the elements of what that needs to be . Six month ago i wouldve said past build back better. Past paid leave, extend the Child Tax Credit. Those things were providing relief for working families when we have them. And it still shocks me that we are bailing out airlines but not moms. All of the evidence and data and all of the pain that politicians of one party are already facing at the ballot box, but they still cant grow a part. That tells me there is something fundamentally that we need to shift in our culture. I was talking to doing a panel with some Senior Executives in canada and some Senior Executives in canada and france. What maybe almost crying is in canada, postpandemic it is we have more women. And that is because you have health care. You have paid leave. When you start encouraging families to share in the Domestic Labor and provide support to single parents, and is actually good for the economy, our health and our children. The fact that we as a country, but likes to say we are about family values, cant get there it is not surprising. I think part of the problem, it goes back to the history. Women were only allowed to work in the workforce because of world war ii. The men were going to war and they needed workers so they said all right, come in. They even provided paid leave and childcare at some moments. Then when the men came back we were pushed out again. So we have always been doing this dance of please let me work , and we have been doing it at the expense again of our families and our own Mental Health. I think we just need to call it right now for what it is, and also resist this push against the old world. Because the opportunity is the Great Resignation. 11 million open jobs. You can see these ceos faces and they are likely is, anybody, please come to work. It is a sellers market. We have an opportunity, all of us, not just women. Parents, nonbinary, all of us have the ability to dictate what we want workplaces to look like. How can women use that leverage . Often when women are under stress, they are looking for a job quickly, they are making a transition of your life, they dont always have the time to thoughtfully think through. Or sometimes they dont have the resources to think through maybe theres a better job, maybe i have leverage. And none of us are taught. Are we doing a good enough job of teaching the next generation of women how to do those things, and what if you are offering specific, concrete advice to someone in the labor market right now, looking for a job, what am i asking for . What am i pushing for . It depends on your age and everything but lets talk about lets talk about specifics. Yeah, and this is how i outlined my book, we know what the problem is, how do we fix it . I think there are two issues. Typically where we have not been any job market where there are so many open jobs in employees have leverage. Thats not going to last forever but it will last for a while. And most of the workplace organizing has often happened in labor unions. So there is not an organization that calls you up and says heres your shots. Maybe you can get them to pay for your childcare. Heres what you need to ask for. We also do need to start teaching, and working women in particular. I think millennials are getting this right. Theyre going in, asking for seven figures, pay for my therapy. They know their worth. It is not a womens issue. It is a working mothers problem. We have been so traumatized by our experience as mothers in the workplace. The motherhood penalty. In the workforce, you get paid 40 on average less than when you exited. So we are saying please let us back in, and we are breastfeeding in closets, putting networking lunches on our calendars rather than taking our kids to the doctors appointment. We are doing zumba, praying our kids arent on screen. That is what we have been too, for 100 years, but is what our grandmothers did, our mothers did and what we are doing. How do you unteach that . So much of the movement has a there. You are the leverage. What is one thing you want to change . What is one thing . Maybe you want to work from home or work remotely at the end of the school day two days a week. Maybe you want to fight for that flexibility and your employer is pushing. Maybe you want to ask about what your childcare benefits are. Part of it is figuring out, what do i need . And then saying and some people i know would rather quit than ask for what they need. The Great Resignation is being led by women. We are quitting. But then we are going to our next and quitting again because we did it did not solve it. I dont want to put it all on us because theres another piece. The things that we want, men want that, too. The amount of men i know that want to take their kids to school in the morning, they are in the job market instead of asking. It shows culturally there is a problem. We are afraid of retribution for trying to advocate for ourselves as parents. What role do you think are basically saying this is the way the United States and its culture has been all along. But what cause is that . Rugged individualism, or women were not in the workforce or striving for perfection, that feminism in america was striving for perfection . What do you think culturally . Or is it literally just the government, we dont want to use the government for our benefit unless we need to . What do you think it is . She sent an interesting thing last night. We were close to getting childcare during nixon. But then the bill failed. And when we asked nixon about that, we heard i think the place for women is at home with the children. When you listen to joe manchin, met romney, you kind of hear the same thing. I think culturally there is not the will to fix workplaces for us by men in leadership. It is the same i would argue with ceos. Im shocked because they know what is happening, they know why they are leaving. They have surveys. They are there still is resistance. It makes me think they dont actually want to make workplaces work for us because maybe they dont want us there. That is maybe at the extreme. And a little of why i came to this topic is because if you are going to be building a movement, you should know the movement that helps organize women, when i wrote my first oped, i read the comment section. And i never be the comments. What was fascinating was people on the left were like, what about the dads . And people on the right were like motherhood is a choice. People on the left still insist on wanting to talk about this issue. I think it is a mistake. I think it is not appealing to the people who are two thirds of caregivers are women. If you dont have focus, you cant move the needle. I believe that. I get called if i had called girls who code kids who code, i would not have attracted thousands of girls. Why are we pushing women out . Why does the pandemic push women out . Why was the caregiving put on women . And on the right it is about this idea that motherhood is a choice and you dont get anything from your government come your partner, your employer. It is this sense of you are in it yourself. It is your personal issue and you have to fix it. The fascinating example of this to me is school closures. I hope somebody writes about this. When that decision was made from a policy perspective, to basically because other countries, the u. K. , they do not shut the schools down. They kept them open for the reason we are about to talk about. We decided to close them and we decided to design something called zoom schooling where you needed a parent and your child at these hour increments. While, again, 80 plus percent of parents work. So most women are in the workforce. We knew in march, april, may and sure we had data, that women were the ones doing the homeschooling. So when they decided to do this crosscountry release of policy and terms of how we were going to teach millions of kids, we knew who was going to be affected by it. But we did not care. And we did not even design it in a way that would relieve the pressure that was going to be put on women to choose between unpaid labor and pay labor. And i wonder, i dont know, because im not an investigative journalist, is that product . Do they talk about that . Were reconsidered . Because we have always been the default, because if men were doing the homeschooling, no way. They would have kept the schools open. It is a fascinating question. My children are above school age at this point, but so many people at my workplace at that point were literally just going, it all went to adjust your personal resources. There was nothing available. If you were a if your husband or partner or anyone was helping you with schooling, that was great. If not, he went to the grandparents. All of these things. You talk in this book about your own experiences. There is literally a moment where you are describing falling apart and being in fetal position on the floor. Was that difficult for you to do . There is almost a trauma around those first couple of months and we did our best but my god. There are these secret conversations women have about, did your children learn anything or do they just run wild . Theres almost a guilt around the pandemic, did we do a good job or did it fail . I dont know that i have ever heard men having those conversations. But i have heard a lot of women. They learned how to play the guitar. Most of them were like thats amazing, i got to thinking rest. I started the pandemic with a girls who code super bowl ad, i had newborn babies, and all this anxiety about not spending time so i was looking forward to my leave. And connecticut got about three weeks after my child was born. I had to go back with a newborn, homeschooled and basically save girls who code from being shut down. When pandemics hit the first resource to go our women and girls. So many womens organizations shut down during the pandemic. Most of my Leadership Team or working moms. Were working moms. We were trying to save our babies, literally, our children. I got covid19 early, my liver failed, i was a mess from the health perspective. And the trauma that that decision was made without my input. It scared the hell out of me. Because so many of us have sacrificed so much to get to that point we were at. To have it taken from you and not acknowledged, two years later it has not been acknowledged. What happened to moms. It is funny. I was writing about this. Everyone this week is like oh my god, you must be so excited, your book, and i was like no, im reliving my trauma. Its about how hard it was. And i had resources. I had childcare. I can work from home. My husband works from home. When it was safe, i dropped my baby off at my parents and they could watch them for a couple of minutes while i worked. Single moms, she had to quit her job, go to another job that she could work at home so she could come so could home school, moved in with her mother, that is typical. My story is not typical. I had it easy compared to my sisters who were drowning and are still drowning. s lets work through this and talk about Smaller Companies, an interesting thing. I think one of the issues in the United States is that a lot of women work for corporations. But a lot of women also because they might come in and out of the workforce tend to work for Smaller Companies or nonprofits or whatever it is. But that is not necessarily go with Just One Company for one time. There are smaller organizations. Smaller organizations have more difficulty doing the kinds of things you are talking about in your book. What would you what do you think are practical ways to also get smaller, not just big operations, but Smaller Companies active on this issue . I was am now a ceo of a smaller company. Very early on, we offered to pay for this. I thought if i could pay for people they will stay with me and i was it was true. People leave companies fast. I just lost im having trouble hearing her but maybe i did something on my end. I think people cannot hear. I think i fixed it. Hooray. He turned on his airpods. Super resilient. We are super proud of you. Thank you all for your patience. We will start again very soon. You ok . Take your time, get settled. Are you ok . Im used to this. Its like a day in the life. Ok. Lets briefly pit pivot to the topic of men. What is the role of men in this, whether were talking about the people who should have some of the burden, the people who if the burden fell on women in the first months of the pandemic, and is still falling on women at this time, what should men do to make this situation better . Our goal would be to solve for the gender inequality happening at all. All studies show that women are doing two and a half jobs. Two thirds of the caregiving work is done by women. So how do we change that . For me, i always say i married one of the good ones. When we had sean, i took leave and he did not. That is how you set the tone. For a lot of us, we have been taught that i cant tell you how many people in this conversation willie hes got to find a new husband. Youre clearly not teaching him well. When you feel like your partner is not doing what theyre supposed to do, you feel like it is your shame. You messed up. We have to take a step back and see it is not my job to fix him. We all have to fix the structure. And we think about one of the things that are exacerbating that . This is why our believe in mandating paid leave. Its not enough for these companies to tout that they offer 28 weeks of paid leave. I want to know, who is taking it . Are the men taking it . Because what we hear from studies is that 70 of american fathers take less than 10 days off. Even if they have it available. Even if they have it available. So we are not fixing the gender issue of Domestic Labor happening at home. I think corporations have to start auditing their policies, what could i be doing that could shift that ratio . That is mandating paid leave, asking on monday morning, it is promoting flexibility and Remote Working. So you do get men being at home to do the laundry between zoom sessions. We have to call that a goal. Its funny, and it is partly cultural, the philippines had an ad campaign. Can you imagine the next super bowl had snoop dogg and lebron james doing an ad campaign about doing laundry . Thats kind of what we need to do. It was good that the ceo of twitter announced that he was taking i would like him to take it more, but that is a step in the right direction. Do you think, this is one of those blame game questions, this is why the conversations are among women happen. Are we two women stayed what they need at their demands clearly enough . Or do we just take it . It is obviously a nowin situation during the pandemic. Youre not going to not feed your child or not care for your child when there is a global emergency going on. But there are moments where women have leverage. As you are saying right now. But are reorganized, are we brave enough, is there enough structure amongst us that that would be supported and whose response ability is that . Is that my responsibility . If those are the questions, are women brave enough, are women doing enough at this moment in time, or is that what you are trying to do to make that call . I think when it comes to ourselves, how do we we talk about how do we empower yourself. And i get sleep more, meditate into yoga. Its about creating tangible boundaries. In our house, i do the mornings, and he does the nights. If im sitting around watching netflix at 6 00, he will be like hey, could you warm up the bottle or change a diaper . So i just leave at 6 00. I go have dinner for myself, i create boundaries. I dont we are here, we left the guys with the kids and i need a list of went to feed them, i lay the pajamas out. Im like why did you do that . You just created all of this work. That is cognitively burned. But his mental brains these than his work. Mental brain space that is work. You have to let that go. I dont think it is so much about them negotiation. This was feeling about covid in terms of our partners. They saw us doing it. Maybe they just dont know. They know. [laughter] it was right in front of them. Its time for us to take our own situation in our own hands. Your second point about how do you get some of these policies implemented, this is really what i do think is missing from the ecosystem in the womens space. When i was trying to get more women to go into technology, girls who code can work with women, come into the offices and say this what we need to do. Thats how we got done. There is no similar organization. That is set up in the same way to put that type of pressure. There isnt government. In the workplace, and that is what marshall did for moms, taking the lead on that and started to take the lead on it. There is an advocacy toolkit. I would fire everybody up, help get it done. My goal is the first step is about subsidizing childcare. We are building a National Business coalition. To be able to everyone is asking for it. Not just mothers, good parents. A lot of this was a young women because during the pandemic, they looked at no thank you. You choose if you dont want to have kids, but we have the preserve choice. This issue, is it really that we are talking about working mothers . Because obviously women have more responsibilities. Parents, but tend to there is this issue of sometimes people in workplaces, if we are trying to make accommodations or help people who have children, people who dont have children can be asked to work. There can be things like that in workplaces. We have all come across this. That would get us back to the question, and this is where countries are different, everyone has a stake in child rearing. Whether you personally have children or not. But we are very far culturally in the United States from that kind of idea. I am curious, is that something you believe in, that regardless of where you are in my journey i should care about the rearing of children and the ability of that to be done well in the World Without impacting some people . I do believe that. I believe when we let the Child Tax Credit expire we put 41 million kids in poverty and that should devastate all of us. Countries are valued in the way that they treat women and children. I also believe as an activist, you always support the most honorable. Right now the most honorable in our country are mothers. Yall have to do our part. I think we have seen other communities, whether it is black lives matter, race, whether it is the lgbtq. You had communities come together and say we are being treated unfairly. And we all, as a community, need to rally around that to root out racism. To root out discrimination based on sexual orientation. We have never seen discrimination against mothers as a thing. Weve never recognized, which is accepted, but fed is real. It is interesting with equal pay day, we had the womens soccer team there, but the pay gap, it is not between childless women and childless men. There are no pay gaps. The largest pay gap is between childless women and mothers. Even for how long we have been trying to solve the pay gap, we had it in the clear we havent been clear about what the pay gap is. It is a mother penalty, period. So we have got to recognize that working mothers are discriminated against in the workforce as a class. And yes, if you have resources, it is a little better. But we have to start by figuring out how do you root out the discrimination against women of color that are underserved . That is where it begins. When we start to see what has happened to them, the choices they have to make. I think about my own mom. My parents came in here as refugees. I was a latchkey kid from when i was seven years old because they could not afford 50 a week for child care. I grew up as a brown family in a white workingclass neighborhood. My parents were bullied. Their house was spraypainted in tipi. But because we cannot afford childcare, my sister and i would walk 10 blocks home and i would say run the 10 blocks home and lock ourselves in our house and hide. We were afraid. Think about how my mother felt. I 3 41 every day, when she had to let her babies walk home. The unconscionable choices that mothers have to make every single day, because we do not provide them support. We make it harder for them. So yeah, take the revolution includes all of us. All of us. Sometimes we have incidents that happen in our life, in our history that show that we need to do something. And covid was one of those. It was that for working mothers. Do you think that story has been told . Obviously there has been coverage and things written, but this is not exactly one of the central narratives of the pandemic. That has been one of the narratives, but certainly not like the biggest story around the pandemic in any, shape or form. God bless every single female journalist. I find it fascinating that women would rather call the Washington Post or the New York Times and scream then called her legislator. I think women have put so much and this story has been kept alive by female journalists. But is it the front page . Is it the thing that as a country are united on . With the womens jobs are . Yeah. There are excellent questions coming in from the people are listening to us so i want some of those. I think there is a right to ask about things like that but these are questions that go to some of the real bone of what we are talking about. The first is a practical question. It is also the kind of think that is front and center. What is your advice for a woman interviewing for a new job who wants to learn about the companys parental leave policy but does not want the company to be scared off from hiring her . [laughter] weve got to get over that. Because our fear in many ways has gotten us there and for all of the men and women who dont have children, you have to ask. An example of this is the amount and millennials come up with Mental Health is a huge issue, i had so many young people come say to me, are you going to pay for my therapy . They were fearless because they knew there was an epidemic and they knew even if they were not experiencing it in solidarity with others they needed to normalize it. And we need to normalize motherhood. And not feel like upon asking about it it means of not going to be a good employer, going to be distracted or nonproductive. We need to normalize looking at workplaces that care about families. And part of this is for others who have partners, what advice would you give to single others trying to navigate these structures . We need to build everything from sickle model and we for them. We need to fight for them. Women who dont have partners and children need to fight for civil bombs. Even if you dont think you need flexibility, we need to ask on behalf of them. So many more families today are being run by single mothers, sickle parents. And we are still operating from a two parent perspective. The pandemic is a great example. Think about the single mothers who had to navigate the zoo and their work. I was telling you today a woman was telling me today our son was making a smoothie in the middle of her call as a pharmaceutical salesperson. We know when that happens, you are looking at me thinking i dont have it together and im not committed. I know that there is a penalty. That is the other thing. I think the mothers noted motherhood penalty peace, we have to demand that every ceo hire for coders, get an algorithm. They can do that overnight. When we start removing it, some of the sickle moms are not getting paid equitably. Not only are they having to do it themselves, they dont have the resources they deserve to do it. All right. This is a good followup. Kimberly asked what are the two or three things you would suggest that investors Ask Companies to do to support women. And also what should consumers do to help hold companies accountable. If i care about this issue and i have leverage as a consumer or investor, what are the practical and most impactful things . I love that. I think investors should ask, i want to see your posts quds policies on maternity leave. What are you thinking that in terms of childcare . Were always talking about attrition. It is the biggest thing people are worried about because it is expensive. Pushing and saying do you think you can reduce your attrition by providing some subsidizing of childcare and acknowledging that is an economic issue. What are you doing to support his Mental Health . Support working womens Mental Health . A lot of companies are seeing women leaving at a greater rate than men. It is not just the Great Resignation. Theres Something Different happening with women. The other thing is Many Employers dont track with eckert tabor with a caretaker. They dont keep track of who is taking care of the elderly, who is apparent. So recognizing at the same way that we recognize race and gender, because we have goals around that. We should have goals around keeping and retaining working mothers. We know that they are the ones that leave at the highest rate. So what are we doing to fix that. Thats interesting. So not just looking race of women in the company, but specifically working mothers, having a Career Advancement in the company. That is interesting. Is there anybody who does that . I dont know. There should be. We have found that technology companies, 50 of women leave by the time theyre 35, normally about the time they are having kids. The narrative used to be they are leaving as they want to spend time with their kids. That is not what is happening. They are leaving because they cant have kids and work here. And again, i think companies have a hard time taking ownership that they may to bidding or their culture might be attribute into some of this. And this is one of our policy focuses, to start looking at attrition and pay equity at the motherhood bias and penalty and start pushing companies to start plugging data on this and offering solutions. We are starting with childcare because i feel like that is not crazy. I feel it is more likely that we are going to get 50, 60, 70 of companies subsidizing childcare, definitely before they pass the bill formerly known as build back better. [laughter] [applause] do you think universal family leave will ever be passed . It has to be. So many organizations, the philanthropic resources, dollars that are going into making sure that those organizations thank god for linda gaetz. Linda gates. She makes sure ththeres a lot d stops. We should have a fully funded 100 million sponsored by whomever paid leave campaign because if we dont we are never going to get it. We did the bipartisan poll on this. Republicans and democrats want this. There is the will for this. Part of what i have found as we started looking into this more deeply is it was i think many of the business coalitions that helped to kill it. There is an narrative on the hill that its too expensive, the government doesnt have to do it because companies arent providing it anyway. If you look at most of the data out there whether its a survey done by Consulting Companies they will say do you offer paid leave or not . The checkbox is a yes or no. The narrative is that everyone is getting paid leave and thats not true. The other narrative is essentially that if i worked at google and we will is essentially offering paid leave, that they are not fighting against the build back better bill to offer it for everybody else. You have to hold all of those companies accountable. The chamber. Everybody who is a member of the chamber accountable for making paid leave not happen for those millions of women who dont have it. The vast majority dont. Thats an interesting thing to look at. Not just our own policies but what they are lobbying for. How do we do it for all of us . It cant just be for you. The system doesnt change if its just for you. One of the audience questions really talking about white this isnt a priority and says only way we make more progress is if we elect more women to positions of power to elevate and legislate these policies at the state and federal levels. How can we change it . Its true, the women that were there fighting were all the women. There just wasnt enough of them. I think thats right, we have to have more women serving. I also think we have to create a movement of mothers, this is what were trying to do, we have to create a coalition of mothers who are fighting for issues that affect mothers. There are great organizations of mothers fighting for their kids. Mothers for climate change, mothers against drunk driving. We dont fight for ourselves. That same energy from all of those mothers across the country that were trying to take books out of schools was put into paid leave and affordable childcare, we would have those things. They want those things. We have to figure out from an activist perspective how to fix that. We didnt have a million mothers marching on washington because we are so tired. What would you do with the kids if you went to the march . Right. You have to zoom school. Do you think that is always going to be an issue . Its not. Because its like i see a gap and i think others see a gap now. The issue on the left is to really start getting people to start organizing embracing mothers as and it doesnt leave anybody out. I think that is challenging. There are mothers fighting for other issues. Dedicated to the things that every single day benefit us. We are so used to being martyrs. So many forgot what it was like. Its why we still fight for choice. I want to protect my right to choose. I want to protect this institution of motherhood because i really believe that in many ways, that is the conflict. This past womens history month, there were probably hundreds of millions of sessions about how to get a mentor. Really it shouldve been how to get the men in the office to do more laundry. [laughter] lets audit our corporate policies and figure out which ones help exacerbate the gender inequality in my home. How do we have a 5050 goal at Goldman Sachs that every Single Family thats a part of Goldman Sachs that gets to that ratio . Can you imagine . We are being instructed again. We are being distracted to telling people to tell us to fix ourselves. We are not the problem. You are essentially saying it needs to be an organizing effort and it needs to be not like again we are going back to fix the woman or fix the workplace. The question is am i doing something wrong that means that i cant bounce the responsibilities that i have or is there something systemic . There is something systemic that doesnt mean you cant fight for the system to change. Its not about you. The system has to change and thats something that we see as a bigger landscape. This is hard. Theres an entire Industrial Complex on corporate feminism. I have a hundred tshirts in my closet about how to be a girl boss. Youre asking people who for the past 30 or 40 years have been telling all of us to work harder. And we will get there. Can you imagine if all of these women in business organizations all of these started saying like me, we were wrong. Weve been focused on the wrong thing, we have to shift our focus and focus on equalizing unpaid labor. Imagine that being possible. I am going to own that as the ceo of girls who code that i need to tell my students and people who look up to make something very different. The second piece is the only way the structure is not going to change is if we fight for. To make sure our allies and partners that we fight for. Nobodys going to give it to us. Its not in their interest. You see that by two years of the pandemic productivity the stock market is through the roof. Systematically nothing has changed in terms of the cost of childcare or Daycare Centers being shut down. Yet still, there is a push to return to the old normal because they are thinking about us. They are thinking about them. There was one question im going to ask came from the audience which was referring to the title of your book, what are the ways that people in the workplace can push for salary transparency . Which many people feel is a critical issue. Its huge. In new york state, you have to start putting your salary demand on job descriptions. Your salary bans on job disruption. Theres a statewide push to have that. If you are c level or a manager and have a say we think about how we are recruiting people, people are going to start asking for. Pretty soon you cant put a post on twitter without putting the salary range. They want this this is the way we are moving. I do think that will help with when you first get into a job. But the question is, the inequality it still grows over time and the promotion. How do you get transparency on that . Good question. Theres a lot of Audience Response from things like saying how wonderful it was that you exhibited or illustrated the issues that women faced. Theres a lot of things like support that you handled it with such grace and empathy that we all have these things. Thats it im going to go kill my husband. [laughter] was a lot of praise for you on how you handle that. Someone said thank you for addressing the major issues. Thats laundry. It speaks to each of us. When the husband or partner deliberately does laundry poorly so it becomes an issue where youre like im just want to take it on. Just a lot of support for everything youre doing. Going to ask one final question which is then we will wrap it up because this is been such an amazing conversation. I only regret is we should have had these conversations in the middle of the pandemic because it could have been so fascinating. I am thrilled that you have written this book and its federalist, but think about if we couldve harnessed this as it was going on. Dont think we have the time or energy to do it, but it could have been such an exciting to think about. My question for you is not just you as a person although im super interested in that, but you as a person who believes in this cause where you go from there . Youve laid out a manifesto. Youre going to talk to companies to get them to make commitments. How would you build that . How would you build on it to make the most progress or how are you intending to build on it to make the most progress . I am igniting a writ a revolution. When theres a problem i want to solve, i dont stop until i do it. Thats exactly what i did for girls who code. Someone said oh thats cute you are teaching girls to code. This is a moment of onceinalifetime moment and i think for someone who has been fighting for women and girls since i was 13, i dont want to die fighting for the wrong thing. This is the problem we have to solve and i do believe in my heart and again at think canada and norway are great examples that if we can fix this, we can get to equality. All the little girls can dream of being president or a ceo. They can dream of being a mother and taking care of your kid then going back to the workforce and being able to go back to the workforce. Its preserving the ability to move in and out it so critical. We have to ignite this fire. I think we can. Im not asking you to march. Im not asking you to call your congressman. But i am asking to advocate for one thing for yourself. Get our toolkit. Sign up to be an advocate. Women need to feel that we are back in control of our lives. In the profile in the Washington Post in the magazine what i said, theres 40 million of us that have gone through some version of a collective experience. Thats a lot of millions. Thats amazing. I think we are all in huge admiration of your energy and intensity and commitment to this. It has been a huge pleasure thank you so much. This has been really inspiring. Thank you so much. I echo that gratitude. Special thanks to you to be with us tonight in the midst of overseeing coverage of the war in ukraine. We are grateful for your time. Thank you to everyone in the audience for joining us. If you would still like to purchase an autographed book, but that in the chat box. We hope you can james okeefe and your new book american muckraker you write that theres an indecently close personal and professional relationship between reporters and the people they are supposed to cover. Is that a bad thing . Parts yes. There has