Sheryl Sandberg

How would you feel if your company inquired about your plans to have more children? Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, believes that an open dialogue about family life between employees and their employers should exist and would lessen the gender gap in the workplace. Sandberg, a 43-year-old mother of two, spoke at the World Economic Forum's annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, sharing her personal experience with gender inequity in the workplace and how avoiding the topic only leads to increased discrimination on both open and covert levels.

At one point during the talk, Sandberg asked the men in the audience with children to raise their hands if their working was a topic that had ever been questioned. Not a single hand went up, a contrast to the many that were raised when the same question was asked of the women in the room. "Think of it like a marathon," Sandberg said. "Everyone's cheering the men on. The messages for women are different: Are you sure you want to run? Don't you want to run? Don't you have kids at home?"

Sandberg's belief is that opening up the dialogue and removing the current constraints of employment law (The Pregnancy Discrimination Act currently prohibits employers from asking female employees about their plans to have children) would benefit women and allow for increased flexibility and greater opportunities for career advancement.

What do you think? Would you be offended if your supervisor or HR department asked you about your plans to have kids?

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Should Employers Be Allowed to Ask Women About Plans to Have Children?

Yes — I agree with Sheryl Sandberg. Open up the lines of communication!

No — I feel protected by the current laws.

There isn't a specific date on the calendar, but sometime in the past two decades, the 9-to-5 workday disappeared, and the quantity of time spent in the office came to outweigh the quality of work completed. For moms who work outside the home, the shift has been extremely difficult, reducing the number of families that eat dinner together and generally reducing the amount of time parents and kids spend together. The only option for some moms who hope to see their tots before bedtime is to sneak out of the office and then "prove" that they are still dedicated by sending emails throughout the night.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's COO, has been an outspoken advocate for working mothers. In a recent interview for the PBS Makers series, the mother of two admitted that she leaves work at 5:30 every day in order to see her kids, but didn't talk about it for years. She said, "I walk out of this office every day at 5:30 so I’m home for dinner with my kids at 6, and interestingly, I’ve been doing that since I had kids. I did that when I was at Google, I did that here, and I would say it’s not until the last year, two years, that I’m brave enough to talk about it publicly. Now I certainly wouldn’t lie, but I wasn’t running around giving speeches on it." She also admitted that she feels like "there's no such thing as work-life balance. There's work, and there's life, and there's no balance."

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Do You "Sneak" Out of Work to See Your Kids?

Yes — I don't advertise leaving early for fear that it could hurt me career-wise.

No — I work for a very family-friendly company where I don't have to "sneak" out.

No — I work late and don't get to see my kids that much during the week.

Many of us look up to Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg as a role model because she's one of the most successful female business leaders of our time. She's consistently ranked by Forbes as one of the most powerful women in the world and she's estimated to be worth a cool $1.6 billion. She's the face of women trying to crack the glass ceiling, and with so many glowing praises showered on Sandberg, I was surprised to see career blogger Penelope Trunk make the bold statement that "very few women want to be Sandberg." Trunk explains:

"Sandberg wants to be a role model for women who want big, exciting careers. But here’s the problem: women don't want to be Sandberg. It’s no coincidence that the number one woman on the list of self-made millionaires is Oprah. She has no kids and no husband. She’s fascinating, nice, and smart. But few of us would really enjoy her life.

Sandberg and Oprah represent extreme choices in life. The things they give up are not things that most women would want to give up in exchange for the wild career success they could have . . . You can't have small kids and a startup if you want to see your kids."

Everyone has a different definition of what it means to "make it." In fact, success for many women doesn't mean climbing the corporate ladder; it's having a good work-life balance, according to a More magazine survey. The Facebook executive may be one of the wealthiest women around, but her intensive job may leave her with less time to spend with her two kids and husband. What about you — would you want to be as successful as Sheryl Sandberg?

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Would You Want to be as Successful as Facebook's Sheryl Sandberg?

Yes — I'd love to be in her shoes.

No — I don't think her lifestyle would suit me.