Name: Nooyi's Sweeping Ideas to Keep Women on Leadership Paths
Uploaded: 2016-09-13
Duration: 6 min 28 s
Description: The CEO of Pepsi says women can’t do it alone

Think the problem is more basic and it's not getting addressed even in today's political discussions. And let me lay out the problem this way. What you talked about is woman as the career builder. And I talked about all of the tips that you need to give them to build their careers. I agree with you. Those are all the right pieces of advice you need to give them. And when we have more than 50 % of graduates being women, and more importantly, the best grades are being gotten by women. Graduate schools, professional schools, women are entering in larger numbers. So we need to keep women in the workforce. All we have to do is look at Japan. It is troubling as a country. They can't grow because 50 % of the workforce there is disenfranchised. They don't have enough women in the workforce and every time Prime Minister [ UNKNOWN ] comes to the United Nations meetings he is calling all of us to talk about how to help get women into the workforce. We have an amazing environment here where we're welcoming of women. However We have forgotten that women also are the people who give birth to the kids. They have to take care of the kids. Men are beginning to help, but it's still not a 50- 50 deal. So there's so much that has to change within corporations, societies, governments and within families. And I'd like to talk about that a little bit. The problem we have is that, as I've said before, the career clock and the biological clock are in conflict with each other. Whatever you do. When you start out in your job, you're bright- eyed and bushy- tailed because you have no encumbrances, you're not married mostly. And then you get married and have your first child. And herein lies the problem. In our country we don't have mandatory time off for everybody once they have a child. Let's say that there's a law that's passed that says everybody has to get 16 week maternity leave. What happens after 16 weeks? That child is still four months old. What are you gonna do? Leave it home alone? Yeah. You can't, okay. [ LAUGH ] And so we still have to worry about how's that child gonna be taken care of. We still need that woman back at work. We still need the husband back at work, if there's a husband or a male. We need both of them in the workforce if you're going to employ all of our citizens. But we have to provide some care system for the child. But let me tell you the problem. We have no vocational school for child care workers. Child care workers are paid very, very poorly. Many cases child care workers themselves have kids they left with even less qualified child care workers. And so we have this vicious circle where if we don't figure out how we're gonna provide trained child care To work with young mothers so that their children can be taken care of while you're at work is not gonna work. Corporations have to step in. Flexible hours, free the mother or father so they can go home, take care of the kids when they come home from school. Some way that you can provide childcare facilities on site or close by. We have to do it, we have no choice. That's the only way we can get our women and men to be gainfully employed. But then let's add more. If as a country we don't set up vocational schools for childcare workers, it's going to be a problem. I'll give you an example. I was stuck in a traffic jam in Manhattan a few weeks ago. And we're stuck near a playground for about 25 minutes and what I saw was two about maybe one or two- year- old kids on swings, in a bucket swing, and the two childcare workers taking care of the two kids. They were child care workers. They were on their phone for all 25 minutes that I was at that block and they just kept pushing the swing. Can you imagine that one- year- old going up and down that swing for 25 minutes? [ LAUGH ] I'm not sure that's child caring. That's doing your YouTube and your Twittering or tweeting, whatever you want to call it. [ LAUGH ] While this kid is rocking back and forth. To me, all of these are cause for concern. And it's come true. As you move into your middle management, you've gotta work even harder to go to the top. Because it's a pyramid, you see, it's not a flat organization. So there is a self- selection process. That's when your kids get older, and they want the parents. Many times, they want mom. Especially if you're daughters, you want your mom. How are you going to provide time off? How are you going to make society run? And then as you get older, and you reach the top, you've got aging parents to take care on. This is not a lament. All that I'm saying is, this is reality. We have to understand that women are human beings. They're not super human beings. [ APPLAUSE ] They're not super human beings. There's only 24 hours in a day. And I speak for myself. I've given up everything that I love because I wanted to do my job well. And whatever time I had available, I worked on my family. Look at my priorities? I wanted to do my job well. And whatever time available I took care of my family. As my husband always says, your list is PepsiCo, PepsiCo, PepsiCo, PepsiCo, then it's your mother, then the kids. And somewhere in the bottom I'm there. [ LAUGH ] And I always tell him, just be happy you're on the list, don't complain. But the fact of the matter is The feel left out. I'm married for 37 years, like married. We're into our almost into our fourth decade, and it's tough to keep the marriage going because men need the time too. So I think with aging parents, with children, Without jobs we have to create new multigenerational households. We have no choice. We have to create communities where people start to live with aging parents and the children close by so that each person can help each other take care of these young ones who're coming up. If we don't start thinking about More communities helping each other, multi- generationally. I just don't know how it's gonna help if you lean in and pull people up, because there's not enough people to pull up. They've all self selected out. You need to have lots of people to pull up, so I think we have to address this whole issue of women into the pipeline [ APPLAUSE ] much more holistically. We have no choice. [ BLANK_AUDIO ]

The CEO of Pepsi says women can’t do it alone