Name: Broad Strokes for February 3, 2017: Sheryl Sandberg's Women's March Regret
Uploaded: 2017-02-02
Duration: 4 min 25 s
Description: In our latest Broad Strokes episode, we discuss Sandberg's recent comments, new research about women in the workforce, and Theresa May.

[ MUSIC ] Welcome to Broad Strokes, Fortune show where we talk about news that matters to women. So this week I'm joined by Claire Zillman, she's our London correspondent. It's awesome to have you- Thank you. In New York studio, especially cuz we get to talk about Sheryl Sandberg. So Sheryl Sandberg's been pretty quiet since the election, but that definitely changed in the last few days. First, she posted on Facebook coming out against Donald Trump's executive order that basically says the US will no longer fund NGO's that offer counseling about abortion, and she. Really backed it up by donating $ 1 million dollars of her own money to Planned Parenthood. And she also was at a conference where she said essentially I'm sorry that I haven't been speaking out on some of these issues and she really called her silence particularly on the women's march on Washington a mistake. Right, that was such a big worldwide event and it was right in her wheelhouse. We didn't hear from her and that was really disappointing to a lot of women. And we've heard a lot of feedback lately by CEOs against Donald Trump's executive orders but a lot of those voices have been male, so it was really nice to hear from her. Yeah, I mean, you can understand why executives like Sam Berg are in a tough position. You're a top exec at a big public company and talking about politics. Is a little scary, but at the same time she's really like chosen this for herself this role as someone who speaks out about women's issues so it's really interesting to watch her sort of try to thread the needle there. Another piece of news that really caught our attention this week was a new study by Pew Research and they gave us some new insight into women's gains in the overall US workforce and the news was not great. They found that the progress that we have made in terms of making up a larger and larger portion of the workforce is actually [ UNKNOWN ] and may never reach 50 percent. Yeah, that was really disappointing and surprising. I mean we consistently have been making so much progress in this area and the researchers did not really say why we're gonna see this reversal. But one thing I thought was really interesting is that they called out that particularly mothers are dropping out of the workforce or not joining in the same rate we've seen in the past. And it makes me wonder about child care. We've talked so much about how expensive child care is, and at a certain point, if you're only making so much in your job and it's costing you more to take care of your children, It makes more sense for women financially to stay home. It was surprising that that they didn't pinpoint that exactly but they did talk about a reversal towards more typical gender roles at home. So I thought that was really interesting Interesting but there was a good piece of news from the report and that's some of the women are not working because they're going to school. So I also want to ask you since you're here in New York today about women's news outside of the US. And if there are particular stories that you think that we should be keeping an eye on. Right. I think we have to talk about the whirlwind that Theresa May went through in the last week. Last week she was facing criticism because she didn't come out and say, I'm going to address women's issues with Donal Trump when I meet with him. And that controversy was quickly forgotten. Because on the same day she visited the White House, Donald Trump issued his very controversial travel ban. Yeah, and she's taken some flack about how she responded to the travel ban and the fact that she has invited him to come to the UK, right? Right, she was very slow to respond. And her response was not as harsh as I think a lot of people wanted, there was big protest this week in London outside her residence and then there was a petition that got a million and a half signatures, people asking Donald Trump to be uninvited for the state visit. Yeah and as if that wasn't enough she also has Brexit on her plate, I think there's been some movement on that this week. Right, that's her primary concern and this week she got a big vote from parliament that really gives her the okay To go ahead with the Brexit process, so we're looking towards March which is her deadline to really start the divorce from the EU. Okay. So we have to keep an eye on Theresa May. Right. She's got a lot of things going on. But unfortunately that's all the time we have this week on Broad Strokes Come back next Friday for another episode on fortune. com. [ MUSIC ] [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

In our latest Broad Strokes episode, we discuss Sandberg's recent comments, new research about women in the workforce, and Theresa May.