Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg spoke at the first TEDWomen conference today about the challenging but vital contributions of working mothers. “Let’s start by acknowledging that we’re lucky—we live in a world where not all women have human rights,” she told participants in DC before citing dismal percentages of the number of women in C-level jobs. When only about 15 percent of corporate board members are women, a number that has hardly risen in the past 10 years, she says she’s concerned not only about the rates at the highest earning parts of the economy but that women are too often dropping out of it.

To stay engaged, she advised:

• Sit at the table. Whether physically or metaphorically, it’s important to “raise your hand and keep it raised.” Women don’t negotiate for ourselves in the work we do enough, she said, and no one gets a promotion they don’t think they deserve (especially those who underestimate their abilities).
• Make your partner a real partner. Even when they’re working, Sandberg estimates that women perform three times the amount of childcare than men do in two parent families. She suggested working inside the home to create more systematic balance, including not pressuring children of different genders differently to succeed.
• Don’t leave before you leave. After seeing women opt out of new projects before they were pregnant or went on maternity leave, Sandberg says she’s tired of seeing women lean back, not forward, even before they take a break from working. “Keep your foot on the gas pedal.”

She brought up the success/likeability paradigm (which says that the two together has a negative correlation for women but a positive one for men), which wasn’t a first for an afternoon that included searching for a new analogy for the “glass ceiling.” Going back to working motherhood, Sandberg said her vision of success—and one that doesn’t include 500+ million Facebook users–is for her daughter to not just succeed but to be liked for her accomplishments.