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From the news team at LinkedIn, I'm Jesse Hemple, and this is Hello Monday, our show about the changing nature of work and how that work is changing us.

When it comes to equality, we want to think that things get better over time.

That opportunity expands, but it doesn't always work that way.

In fact, sometimes if we're not paying close attention opportunity actually contracts.

This is what happened for Silicon Valley product managers a decade ago.

I started talking to other women and I realized this happened to so many of us that there was a point in the middle where all of us

It's like you know product falls out a product market fit right we fell out a product market fit with our with product management

Even though we had done the role we were no longer invited to the party that's Deb Lou. Deb started as a product manager at PayPal and

she moved on to Facebook. If you've ever bought, sold, or even browsed

on Facebook Marketplace, you already know her work.

So a few years ago, Deb noticed something.

When she started, her peers were both men and women.

It seemed pretty much 50-50, but a decade in, the women had mostly disappeared.

Deb set out to understand just how this happened. She shared this work in an article. It was called,

What Happened to Women in Product? We link to it in our newsletter, and I can start required reading

for anyone who cares about equity in tech.

Here's Deb.

Back in the day 20 years ago when I started in this field,

...