Marissa Mayer is taking it on the chin, again.
In a recently leaked memo detailing how telecommuting is now verboten over at Yahoo, the embattled CEO found herself on the podium of vilification.
Both mainstream and social media erupted in simultaneous horror. “How could she?” “What does this say about her as a parent or even as a woman?”
Wake up and smell the coffee people. This is a woman who is a CEO. And therein lies the contradiction.
The point that is most worrisome is the prevailing thinking that as a female CEO, you need to stand on the feminist soapbox while being a hard-headed business leader. Sometimes you just can’t do both.
“The decision to make Marissa Mayer the new face of feminism was ours, not hers.”
Marissa Mayer has made her point very clearly: She’s not going to be the “mommy CEO.” She’s not going to make an early mark by extending favorable policies to women and to parents. She needs to quickly show how she’s going to save an ailing and bloated company. And yet, many of us can’t get our heads around that when her thinking flies in the face of perspectives we feel she should uphold.
According to a recent article in Business Insider, Yahoo is full of people who telecommute – some who haven’t stepped foot inside the mothership for years. Yet, they are reaping the benefits, the paycheques and the free iphone, while the company has lagged behind its most fierce competitors.
Sure there will be people who don’t like this decision, and they will leave. Clearly, that’s exactly what Mayer hopes will happen, which will be a huge boost to the bottom line.
Which is why she was hired in the first place. The decision to make Marissa Mayer the new face of feminism was ours, not hers.
Yet, since her hiring, women have not been kind to her. Not when she refused to appear pregnant on the cover of Fortune magazine, not when she crowd-sourced her baby’s name and not when she declared that taking care of her baby was “easy.”
Let’s look at it from a business perspective: She needs to prove herself to her company, to her Board, to the stock market and to the business world at large. She needs to make quick wins within the company, help it grow and make it profitable. There’s little room for mommy empathy in any of that.
There is no doubt this woman has steely resolve. She will let this current anger burn hot and subside, then get on with the job she was hired to do.
Maybe, just maybe, Marissa Mayer has a grander plan. Once she has the credibility of saving a company and winning the respect of Wall Street, she will have the potential of standing on an even grander soapbox for carving out family friendly policies. Policies that even the old boys will have to take into consideration.
So, let’s not accuse of her of not breaking through the glass ceiling. She’s actually starting to smash it bit by bit.
This post first appeared in the blog “The Broad Side”
