By Moira Forbes, ForbesWoman – The world’s most highly anticipated IPO is also calling attention to a problem that continues to plague corporate America: the lack of women on boards. Scheduled to go public in May, Facebook was founded on innovation and disruptive thinking – but the company has yet to appoint one woman to its seven-person board of directors. This glaring blemish on Silicon Valley’s social media giant prompted the likes of Malli Gero, the Executive Director of 2020 Women on Boards-a national campaign to increase the percentage of women on public boards—to issue a press release entitled “Facebook IPO is No Friend to Women.”“Does Mr. Zuckerman think that women are too busy socializing on line to sit on his board?,” Gero queries.

It is precisely because Facebook is a friend to women that the issue of their board composition has become such a high-profile subject of concern. Women not only represent the majority of social media users in the country –and especially amongFacebook’s 800 million-member community—but there’s a woman at the top of the company who is largely responsible for its extraordinary growth: Facebook COO  Sheryl Sandberg.

Number 5 on Forbes’ 100 Most Powerful Women list, Sandberg has helped build and transform some of the most dynamic tech and social media companies of our lifetime. Like many of today’s most notable leaders, she also has leveraged her multiple spheres of influence to passionately support the growth of women in leadership. In recent years, she’s emerged as one of the most recognized advocates dedicated to advancing more women into positions of power, including seats in the boardroom.  One example: Sandberg’s remarks at the 2010 TED conference,  “Why we have too few women leaders?,” generated over an astonishing one million YouTube views – a number you usually see next to videos of piano-playing dogs versus a serious conversation on women’s leadership.

So all of this, coupled with Sandberg’s position and her influence at Facebook, begs the question: Why isn’t there at least one woman on the board?

Equally confounding to outsiders is how Facebook, which seeks to drive social and cultural change, appears woefully negligent in addressing the critical issue of diversity on their own board. Diverse boards also drive bottom line value to companies as well as shareholders, a point now being raised by key Facebook partners.  ”We are disappointed that the Facebook board will not have any women members,” wrote Anne Sheehan, Director of Corporate Governancefor CalSTRS in a letter to Mark Zuckerberg. On behalf of the country’s second largest pension fund, Sheehan believed “that investors and the company would benefit from a larger, more diverse board.”

Amidst all the media buzz of the past week, I was struck re-readingMark Zuckerberg‘s letter to investors as the company filed for their $5 billion IPO.

“By giving people the power to share, we are starting to see people make their voices heard on a different scale from what has historically been possible. These voices will increase in number and volume. They cannot be ignored. Over time, we expect governments will become more responsive to issues and concerns raised directly by all their people rather than through intermediaries controlled by a select few.

Through this process, we believe that leaders will emerge across all countries who are pro-internet and fight for the rights of their people, including the right to share what they want and the right to access all information that people want to share with them.”

Zuckerberg’s remarks serve as a primer for how to address the growing frustrations around the company’s Y-chromosome-stacked board. Yet isn’t it all the more ironic when we are calling for change at Facebook, the very platform that has ignited some of the most powerful reforms of our times. Shouldn’t we be using this playbook on Facebook?

To read the ForbesWomen article, click here.