On Tuesday, Sarah Wynn-Williams, former director of global public policy at Meta (at the time the company was called Facebook), published a book with her memoirs describing 6 years of working for Zuckerberg — and, among other things, the activities of a secret women’s club created in 2017.

Initially, the club consisted of 200 female employees (out of a total of 17,048 Facebook employees at the time), and its main goal was to encourage women to discuss and solve «systemic problems», which included sexual harassment by male executives.

Williams notes that the group was created after the strange actions of Sheryl Sandberg, then COO of Meta, who ignored the Women’s March, a large-scale women’s protest against Donald Trump and the patriarchy in 2017. Her absence was quite noticeable, as Sandberg had written a bestselling book «Lean In» to encourage women to assert their interests in the workplace and was considered a global advocate for women’s rights.

Williams also described an episode that took place on a private jet on their way back from Davos, where she and Sandberg’s assistant repeatedly tried to bring up the march, while Sheryl kept changing the subject and talking about her weekend plans, her boyfriend, or what First Lady Melania Trump was wearing at the inauguration.

Later, Sandberg told tech journalist Kara Swisher that although the event prevented her from attending, she regretted not posting. She left Meta in 2022 and said she would focus on philanthropy.

Williams says that the «feminist fight club» itself made «enough noise» and caught the attention of executives — Meta subsequently launched a system with the hashtag #ally that rewarded men for supporting women. However, the group perceived this negatively and solely as a way to «incentivize and reward men, not women».

Meta’s current spokesman, Andy Stone, has already called Williams’ book «a combination of old allegations and false accusations against executives» and said she was fired for her behavior and poor performance.

Source: Business Insider