Sheryl Sandberg: Companies Need To ‘Lean In’ As Pandemic Threatens Women’s Progress

Emma Bowman | 01 October 2020

As a champion for women “leaning in” at work, Sheryl Sandberg, the chief operating officer at Facebook, is worried.

The coronavirus pandemic, and related issues like lack of childcare and school, are taking a disproportionately heavy toll on working women, with effects that will be felt for years to come, according to a new report from Sandberg’s Lean In foundation and McKinsey & Company.

The sixth annual Women In The Workplace report found that 1 in 4 women are considering scaling back their career or leaving the workforce altogether — the first time the rate has been higher than it is for men. In the recent years, that number was about 15% for both men and women.

“What we are seeing in this report should terrify all of us,” Sandberg tells NPR’s Audie Cornish. “We are pulling the alarm bell here.”

Mothers, in particular, bear the heaviest burden. As a group, working mothers are three times more likely than fathers to do the majority of housework. Women with male partners shoulder, on average, an extra 20 hours a week of that work, the survey found. The burden is even heavier on the 20% of mothers who are single.