still waving in the air, I took more questions—only from the men.
Instead of my words touching her, her words hit me like a ton of bricks. Even though I was giving a
speech on gender issues, I had been blind to one myself.

If we want a world with greater equality, we need to acknowledge that women are less likely to
keep their hands up. We need institutions and individuals to notice and correct for this behavior by
encouraging, promoting, and championing more women. And women have to learn to keep their
hands up, because when they lower them, even managers with the best intentions might not notice.

When I first started working for Larry Summers, then chief economist at the World Bank, he was
married to a tax attorney, Vicki. He was very supportive of Vicki’s career and used to urge her to “bill
like a boy.” His view was that the men considered any time they spent thinking about an issue—even
time in the shower—as billable hours. His wife and her female colleagues, however, would decide that
they were not at their best on a given day and discount hours they spent at their desks to be fair to the
client. Which lawyers were more valuable to that firm? To make his point, Larry told them the story of
a renowned Harvard Law School professor who was asked by a judge to itemize a bill. The professor
responded that he could not because he was so often thinking about two things at once.

Even now, I’m a long way from mastering the art of feeling confident. In August 2011, Forbes put
15
out its annual World’s 100 Most Powerful Women list. I’m savvy enough to know that the list wasn’t
based on a scientific formula and that magazines love these features because they generate lots of page
views as readers click through each name. Still, I was shocked—no, horrified—to learn that Forbes
ranked me as the fifth most powerful woman in the world, right after German chancellor Angela
Merkel, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff, and the CEO of
PepsiCo, Indra Nooyi. This put me ahead of First Lady Michelle Obama and Indian politician Sonia
Gandhi. Absurd. My own mother called to say, “Well, dear, I do think you are very powerful, but I am
not sure you are more powerful than Michelle Obama.” You think?

Far from feeling powerful, I felt embarrassed and exposed. When colleagues at Facebook stopped
me in the halls to say congratulations, I pronounced the list “ridiculous.” When friends posted the link
on Facebook, I asked them to take it down. After a few days, my longtime executive assistant, Camille
Hart, summoned me into a conference room and closed the door. This was serious. She told me that I
was handling the Forbes thing poorly and that I needed to stop subjecting anyone who brought up the
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list to a diatribe on its absurdity. I was showing too many people how uncomfortable I felt and
revealing my insecurity. Instead, I needed to simply say, “Thank you.”

We all need colleagues like Camille, who was honest enough to point out my less-than-gracious
response. She was right. Whether the list was ridiculous or not, I didn’t write it and I didn’t have to
react negatively to it. I doubt a man would have felt so overwhelmed by others’ perception of his
power.

I know that my success comes from hard work, help from others, and being at the right place at the
right time. I feel a deep and enduring sense of gratitude to those who have given me opportunities and
support. I recognize the sheer luck of being born into my family in the United States rather than one of
the many places in the world where women are denied b