My Life in Full: Work, Family, and Our Future

by Indra Nooyi

Our failure to address work and family pressures in the senior reaches of global decision-making restrains hundreds of millions of women every day, not only from rising and leading, but also from blending a satisfying career with a healthy partnership and motherhood.

“You may be the president or whatever of PepsiCo, but when you come home, you are a wife and a mother and a daughter. Nobody can take your place. “So you leave that crown in the garage.”

The number of female CEOs in the Fortune 500 rose from ten in 2006 to thirty-two in 2017 and then thirty-seven in 2020. We’ve only moved from less than 2 percent women CEOs in the Fortune 500 to 7.5 percent over twenty-seven years. Progress on this issue, it seems to me, should not be about celebrating gains or lamenting losses when the number of women at the top of large companies is still abysmally low.

At a minimum, we should give workers whose jobs mostly happen at a desk the choice to work from wherever they want—at home, in a coworking space, or in a central office. Evaluations should be adjusted so that people who spend less time physically in the office aren’t judged differently from those who spend more time there. We don’t want to create different classes of workers, again casting people with family obligations in a negative light.

we should encourage many more options to let people come in and out of paid work. Some companies have introduced programs that acquaint returning employees with new job requirements and new organizational priorities. For those who build this into their business model, there are clear advantages: returnees, with institutional knowledge and networks, can be very valuable hires. Why not take advantage of their expertise? This could very well be the future of work.