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Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, walks onto the stage during the APEC Women and the Economy Summit in San Francisco on Thursday, Sept. 15, 2011.David Paul Morris/The Associated Press

What's the best marital decision a woman can make, according to the most powerful woman at Facebook? Marry another woman.

Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook's chief operating officer, shares that opinion in a new video for the Makers series by PBS and AOL.

"The most important thing – and I've said it a hundred times and I'll say it a hundred times – if you marry a man, marry the right one," she says. "If you can marry a woman, that's better because the split between two women in the home is pretty even, the data shows."

In case you're curious, Ms. Sandberg hasn't followed her own advice; she's married to a man.

Ms. Sandberg also discusses the different ways in which men and women deal with having busy careers and home lives.

"I feel guilty when my son says, 'Mommy, put down the BlackBerry, talk to me,' and that happens far too much. I think all women feel guilty. I think what's interesting is I don't know many men who feel guilty," she says. "I don't know a lot of men who feel guilty for working full time, it's expected that they'll work full time. … I wonder if there were more shared responsibility if more men would feel guilty too and women would feel less of it."

A Statistics Canada report published late last year found that the gap between the time women and men spend doing household chores is shrinking. When baby boomer women were in their 20s they did 1.2 more hours of housework a day than men; for members of Generation Y, that number has shrunk to 0.4 hours.

So men, if you don't like doing housework, well, that's one thing. But consider this: According to an Oxford study, your willingness to do the laundry and otherwise pitch in around the house might help land you a spouse. And then you can make her do all the laundry.

Just kidding.

How important do you think it is for men and women to spend equal time on housework and child care?

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