Facebook COO: 'Girls need to be taught how to lead'

Facebook’s Chief Operating Officer, Sheryl Sandburg, calls for equality in the way we teach our children to lead from a young age.

This comes following Uber’s announcement that Sandburg was in the running to replace Travis Kalanick as CEO of the start-up company. The Facebook exec is wanted by the company to quell frequent reports of their sexist culture. However, Sandburg will not be the one to bring the company into an age of equality, as she has made it clear she does not want the job.

In an interview with BBC Radio Four’s ‘Desert Island Discs’, Sandburg explains that the different ways in which we approach leadership with boys and girls is wrong: “We start telling little girls not to lead at a really young age and we start to tell boys [to] lead at a very young age. That is a mistake.”

Sandburg told BBC how she herself experienced feelings of self-doubt whilst she was studying at Harvard. She also commented on the fact that it has become largely recognised that women more frequently underestimate their own worth than men. This was something she realised later in life, but she showed strong resolve to change this mindset, saying: “I don’t want to be underestimated because I’m a woman, I don’t want to underestimate myself.”