One of the world's most successful businesswomen, Sheryl Sandberg, has called for public and corporate policy changes to close the gender pay gap.
Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, whose personal wealth has been estimated at $1.7 billion (£1.3 billion), argued that one such policy should be to ensure an equal number of men and women compete for key job opportunities.
"We need to start paying women well and we need the public and the corporate policy to get there," she said on BBC Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs. "Certainly, women applying for jobs at the same rate as men, women running for office at the same rate as men, that has got to be part of the answer."
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Sandberg's comments come less than a fortnight after it emerged that the BBC's own gender pay gap is especially pronounced among its top-earning stars. Nearly 50 of the corporation's female presenters have since written to the BBC's director-general, Lord Hall, to urge him to "correct the disparity."
Sandberg chose Beyoncé's feminist anthem "Run the World (Girls)" as her first song on Desert Island Discs. She also argued that society needs to do more to encourage girls and young women to fulfil their potential from a very young age.
"We start telling little girls not to lead at a really young age and we start to tell boys [to] lead at a very young age. That is a mistake," she argued. "I believe everyone has inside them the ability to lead and we should let people choose that not based on their gender but on who they are and who they want to be."
You can now listen to Sheryl Sandberg's Desert Island Discs in full online. We recently rounded up some of our favourite ever episodes from the BBC Radio 4 staple's 75-year history.
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