Facebook COO Sherly Sandberg tells World Economic Forum men running world is not ‘going that well’

ZING! Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has certainly leaned in this time — telling a high-level panel what she really thinks about men running the world.

CEO of Microsoft Corporation Satya Nadella, left, and Chief Operating Officer of Facebook Sheryl Sandberg, right, speak during a panel session on the first day of the Annual Meeting of the World Economic Forum, WEF, in Davos, Switzerland, Wednesday, Jan. 20, 2016. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)

ZING! Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg has certainly leaned in this time — telling a high-level panel what she really thinks about men running the world.

“At the risk of shocking everyone so early in the morning, men still run the world — I’m not sure it’s going that well,” the high-profile chief operating officer and author told a panel at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.

Appearing with Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, Rwandan President Paul Kagame and business leaders Anand Mahindra and Zach Bookman, Ms Sandberg said the lack of female representation at the top table had disadvanged companies and countries for years.

“That means when it comes to decisions impacting the world, women are not at those tables where decisions are made,” she said.

“We know from studies of peace treaties to the performance of teams that when women are at those tables, performance is better and yet when you look at most of those tables women aren’t there or they’re massively under-represented.”

Sheryl Sandberg and her late husband David Goldberg.

The group were gathered to discuss the “transformation of tomorrow” in a wide-ranging discussion covering everything from Islamic State recruitment to Uber and the “fourth industrial revolution” set to disrupt the way we live and work.

The Facebook board member of mother-of-two posited technology developments set to impact our lives can be viewed as a choice between “hope and fear” and said “every technology that has ever been invented has caused great fears.”

However the greatest challenge to her theme of one big connected world came when Anand Mahindra, the chair of Indian company Mahindra and Mahindra, said we need to create “artificial empathy” rather than “artificial intelligence” after seeing a group of young women use their phones for 15 minutes at a dinner table on a #girlsnightout.

“I know there never was a girls night out,” he said.

“It eluded them. The essence of that human interaction is being recorded but it never existed. It’s some kind of ghost world that never existed, he said — likening new technology to The Force — that can be used for good or evil.

“There has to be empathy. My point is how do we program not artificial intelligence but artificial empathy? I know that sounds crazy ... will you create articifial empathy for us?” he asked.

Watch the full discussion online at the World Economic Forum here

Originally published as Facebook COO Sherly Sandberg tells World Economic Forum men running world is not ‘going that well’