On Lean In's 6th anniversary: A lookback and look ahead

Six years ago today, Lean In was published. It kicked off a conversation about women, ambition, and how far from equality we are. But the book was always meant to be a launching point for something more. LeanIn.Org is that something more. I’m proud of what we’ve done in the past six years—and excited about what lies ahead.

This is an amazing time for women’s leadership. More women than ever are running for president. More women than ever are serving in Congress. And they’re putting so-called women’s issues—like childcare, paid leave, and sexual harassment—front and center, where they belong. 

It’s also an amazing time for women’s activism. Women are marching for their rights and for a better, fairer world. They’re speaking up to say #MeToo and TIME’S UP. They’re finding strength in numbers.

And women are leaning in in quieter ways. They are staying in the workforce at the same rates as men. And they’re asking for raises and promotions as often as men do—which wasn’t the case fifteen years ago.

Every day, we see small victories like this in our global Circles community. In these small peer groups, women support each other, learn from each other, and set and achieve goals together. In 2018, Circles grew at the fastest rate in four years, because the women in them are going farther together.

Women are doing their part. They’re leaning in. Now we all need to do our part to get to equality.

That means getting the fundamentals right. Because women’s time and labor are just as valuable as men’s, we need equal pay. Because workers deserve time to care for new children or aging parents, we need paid family leave. Lean In has stood up for these issues, and we will keep standing up for them.

Companies need to treat gender equality like the business imperative it is, which starts with understanding the problem. That’s why we conduct Women in the Workplace—the largest study of its kind—with McKinsey & Company. Each year, we delve into the systemic barriers and everyday discrimination women face and point to what companies can do better.

And we need to keep combating bias. Women are held back by tired stereotypes about leadership, and two-thirds of women experience microaggressions at work. Lean In has been pushing back against this bias from the beginning, and we are only getting started. Our Ban Bossy campaign challenged the messages we send to girls about leadership. Our partnership with the NBA calls on men to be equal partners at home. And we just released 50 Ways to Fight Bias, an activity that highlights specific examples of workplace bias with advice on what to do to counteract it.

Inequality has been the norm for a long time. Undoing it is going to take a long time, too. In the grand scheme, six years is a blink of an eye. Yet in that time Lean In has grown far beyond what Sheryl and I imagined at the start. And there are a lot of people to thank for that.

Thank you to all the trailblazing women in our Circles community who are challenging the status quo in their corners of the world.

Thank you to all the organizations that have worked with us and taken strides of their own to advance equality.

Thank you to the entire team at the Sheryl Sandberg & Dave Goldberg Family Foundation—the hardest-working, warmest-hearted group I can imagine.

And of course, thank you to Sheryl, the woman who started it all. She supports us at every step, and she never stops inspiring us. We couldn’t ask for more.

Looking ahead, we’ll keep up the fight. The fight for more people of every gender to pursue their ambitions. For more girls to grow up confident and strong. For more women to become leaders, whatever that means to them. For women and girls to be equal to men and boys.

We can all fight to make that world a reality. That’s what leaning in has always meant to me. 

(Art by Clarice Cho)