I've been following news about Marissa Mayer and Yahoo pretty carefully. It has the A)women in technology angle and the B)women leaders and parenting angle. Lots to love here.
The latest discussion has been around Mayer's plan for maternity leave – a few weeks off and working from home.
Michelle Goldberg writes,
The danger lies with the idea that Mayer offers any sort of a template for most working women. It seems entirely possible that, with nannies, night nurses, the ability to telecommute and set her own hours, and a husband with a flexible schedule, Mayer’s postpartum plans will work out fine. We should be far more worried about the huge number of mothers forced to return to work shortly after childbirth with none of those supports.
Goldberg worries that Mayer is setting a bad example for other women in his company who need more time off. She might be like Zoe Cruz during her time at Morgan Stanley who was hostile to women who wanted flex time.
Yes. There's a real reason to have a few months off after childbirth. Some people have traumatic births that require serious recovery time. (I couldn't walk up and down the stairs of subway or my apartment building for weeks after my birth.) Parents need to bond with their children during that first couple of months. Honestly, nobody is getting much sleep. It's true that all problems can be dealt with if you're making $71m per year, but that's just not typical. And Mayer's example sets a very bad precedence for the rest of us.
Apt. 11d 
I completely disagree. She’s setting the precedent that a pregnant woman can be valuable enough that someone is willing to pay her a gazillion dollars in spite of the risk that she’ll quit and does it. This is a long way from the day when job interviews at Harvard were taken aside to be told that they might want to reconsider the position, because “it was really hard” and they might not be able to combine it with a family.
It doesn’t help anyone one who’s not aiming for that level, but that doesn’t mean it’s progress for someone who might be. It doesn’t have anything to do with whether the lawyer who makes 200K the doctor who makes 150K professor who makes 100K teacher who makes 50K or the housekeeper who makes 25K should have maternity leave or that those jobs should be organized in a way that makes it possible for someone else to do the job or for the job not to get done when the person is on leave.
What would have been better for women? If Mayer didn’t take the job because she was pregnant? if she wasn’t offered it? if Yahoo had to go on a 3 mo hiatus while she took maternity leave?
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I can’t speak to whether Mayer is an advocate for others balancing family lives. But, I consider her choice to take the job of CEO while pregnant as completely separated from whether she allows her employees family balance (though balance will have a cost).
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Don’t forget–at this point, she can’t outsource being pregnant.
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if Yahoo had to go on a 3 mo hiatus while she took maternity leave?
I’m not sure if Yahoo went on a 3 month hiatus anybody would notice, unless those three months were in 1997.
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MH–so true!
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There are women who are fighting to get 3 months off after the birth of their children. Fighting. 99% of women need that time to recover from childbirth, bond with their children, and remain sane. They don’t have the resources for night nurses and live in housekeepers and cooks. Mayer’s example undermines all those women who are fighting to have a few weeks of paid leave and to have that job waiting for them after their leave.
It would have been better if Mayers took three months off after she had her child and a replacement came in for those three months. The company would have been FINE without her for those three months.
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I’m with 100% with bj on this. What Mayer does or does not do with her maternity leave has little to do with what the average pregnant woman can or should expect for time off after the birth of a child. What is the thinking here? That companies will say, “But Marissa Mayer only took a few weeks off, why can’t you?” I think most corporations are more sophisticated than that.
If she took a three month leave would that make hotels more willing to offer paid pregnancy leave to maids? Would school districts be more likely to extend the leave of teachers? That seems very unlikely. I am all for policies that promote longer leaves but the advocacy of that seems pretty separate from the choices women at the very top are making.
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You don’t think that there’s a trickle down effect? I do. Goldberg’s article gives the example of Zoe Cruz at Morgan Stanley. Because she didn’t take much maternity leave time, she didn’t think any of her employees needed it either. It sends the tone for that corporation at the very least.
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Mayer’s example undermines all those women who are fighting to have a few weeks of paid leave and to have that job waiting for them after their leave.
I’m with jb and scantee. Why is this any of my business? We’ve generally criticized both sides of the “mommy war” people — “You’re not a real feminist if you stay at home and don’t have a full-time job.” “You’re not a good mother if you work full-time and don’t stay home with your kids for 18 years.” Both sides are full of crap.
Why is any smaller decision — like how long to take maternity leave — open for judgment? Yahoo is an actively collapsing business where several CEO’s have been fired recently for not saving the company. At this point, how do you say, “The company would have been FINE without her for those three months.” They are looking for a CEO because the company is not fine.
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I know that I always feel a bit angry when I see articles about:
1. The woman who ran a marathon while nine months pregnant
http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/10/11/a-marathon-runner-delivers-a-baby/
2. The woman who coached her team to a winning basketball game WHILE in labor
http://www.nbcdfw.com/news/sports/Coach-Leads-Team-to-State-Tourney-Berth-After-Giving-Birth-117108523.html
AND so forth, because I feel like the media lionizes these women with the implicit subtext “what’s wrong with the rest of you? Why are you such a bunch of whiners?”
My son spent a week in the NICU while we prayed he wouldn’t die. Would another mother have left his side
to coach a basketball game, work out or handle another law brief? Should that really be the standard that gets women praised?
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So, if Mayer’s calculus is, “It’s unrealistic for me to take a position as a CEO only to take several months off so I’ll have to take a short leave. It’s really going to suck but I think it’ll be worth it in the long run for me and my family. Fortunately, I’m totally rich so I can pay to have as much help as I need.” she should still take three months off to set a good example?
No one, man or woman, who is a CEO can take three months off when their company is struggling. She is a smart woman who obviously decided that the benefits of accepting this position outweigh the drawbacks of turning it down. I think we should accept that she knows what is best for her and her family. I think we should accept that even if she changes her mind somewhere down the line.
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Should be “The benefits of taking this position outweigh the benefits of turning it down.”
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To be honest, I personally don’t think Mayer knows what’s she’s getting into. (I’d feel differently if she were having her second child). She may be doing the calculus scantee describes, and it might work out that way. Or, she might find herself unwilling or unable to meet the demands of her position. But she’ll do ok (and so will her baby). I might worry a bit if I were a yahoo employee or stockholder, but, given their track history with CEOs, it doesn’t seem like a huge worry. They take the risk of another turnover in any case, and they’re getting someone they are excited about in the short run.
Regarding trickle down, if she’s the type of person who says “I did it this way, everyone else should too” she won’t be good for people trying to find alternative paths. But, neither would the man who conveniently has a wife to give birth to his child (and take the maternity leave).
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“I personally don’t think Mayer knows what’s she’s getting into. (I’d feel differently if she were having her second child).”
Very true.
“Or, she might find herself unwilling or unable to meet the demands of her position. But she’ll do ok (and so will her baby). I might worry a bit if I were a yahoo employee or stockholder, but, given their track history with CEOs, it doesn’t seem like a huge worry.”
Yeah, it’s Yahoo. (Was AOL not hiring?)
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I’m saying “good for her” in any case. I hope she’s not one of those people (like so many in the mommy wars) who believe that their choice is the one true and right way and that anyone who does or chooses anything else is plain wrong.
That attitude, more than anything else, fuels the problems in promoting mat and pat leave options that far too few people, especially in the US, enjoy.
I’m more disappointed that she says she isn’t a feminist because that’s a negative word (as you highlighted in your earlier post on her) because that kind of talk suggests that she’s not sensitive to systemic and engrained misogyny that other women around her regularly experience. I can hope that she’ll promote family and life-friendly policies in the Yahoo workforce – I’m still waiting for my dozen shares to bounce back up to something approaching their 1990s value but I’d much rather see the company be humane while it tries to become relevant again.
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If Mayer was an ordinary worker, I wouldn’t care one whit about how much time she took for off for maternity leave. Whatever. But she isn’t an ordinary worker. She’s a CEO of a major company. Her high profile two week maternity leave is going to be observed and commented upon by everyone. Sadly, nobody at CNN called me to ask me how much time I took off after my kids were born. She’s setting an impossible standard and setting back the movement for better work policies for mothers.
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She may claim to not be a feminist now, but let’s ask her again in a year and see if she still agrees. Many of us didn’t feel like we needed feminism before our kids were born.
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How is she setting the standard? That’s the part I don’t get. It really sounds like you’re saying she should take a longer leave just to show the importance of leave for the average worker. . To me, a long maternity leave for a CEO (at least one in her position, new and at a troubled company) is impossible. The alternative isn’t for her to take a longer leave it’s to not accept the job at all.
And yeah, I don’t like her negativity about feminism but I think that is a separate issue from what she “should” be doing with her maternity leave.
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I just don’t see her as a role model at all – in fact I see her as quite old school. How different is she from any other senior executive who has sacrificed everything for paid work? It’s that old model – supported by a team of family and paid staff who will do everything else. The ONLY difference is that she will reproduce physically rather than her spouse.
Very ’80’s Bonfire of the Vanities-ish.
Do I expect her to be a role model? I was going to say no but let me change that. As a member of a subordinate group in this instance, yes, I do. Just as if I was a person of colour and would expect someone of colour who was a pioneer to be a role model. When you are one of the first you carry WAY more weight than you should but that’s reality. And you can’t just slough it off and expect to be taken as an individual. You WILL be taken as representative of your subordinate group.
And I do have judgements. I believe that career/family shouldn’t be an either/or and in this situation it IS an either/or in that she has chosen her career. I make the same judgements for anyone of any gender who chooses paid work over family. I think it’s incredibly short-sighted.
I can appreciate that at this level it is a 24/7 job but I do feel sorry for those holding these positions.
In 20 years this’ll be a line on her resume. In 50 years it’ll mean nothing at all. No one will remember. Your work doesn’t love you back.
Like I said above, it seems so retro to have someone fairly young and with so many opportunities/privileges to make what appear to me to be very old fashioned choices around what it means to be successful.
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And yeah, she might have her baby and decide that parenting that child is totally incompatible with being a CEO but I think she deserves to be trusted that this is what is best for her family at this point in time. When I was pregnant with my first I got so much “just you wait” type of advice from people who were skeptical of my desire to return to work and I found it so annoying and disrespectful. Thanks Person-who-is-not-me for cluing me into what I really want.
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What is the choice you’d like to see her making? What does a young, female CEO do to be a good role model for work life balance?
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Amen to everything @scantee has said here.
I fail to see how Mayer’s estimate about taking a 2 week leave is written somewhere in stone. Rather, the CEO has a duty not to send the company’s stock price into a nosedive, so she’s wise to measure her words. The boss can change her mind if the postpartum reality isn’t as predicted.
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“What is the choice you’d like to see her making? What does a young, female CEO do to be a good role model for work life balance?”
My point is that there isn’t any work/life balance as a CEO – it’s not possible. I don’t see her as a role model at all – just someone who is driven and focused enough on attaining that level of performance. She’ll be making the same sacrifices that CEO’s have made for decades.
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Long leaves of absence just aren’t part of the executive job expectation, especially for a new CEO. Is it really her responsibility, personally, to try to change this herself? Realistically, how could she? While trying to turn around a company? Do you know what the size and scope of that task is?
While I understand the concern about what the media will do with her story, I think that CEOs cannot be role models for work family balance because their incomes give them access to resources that even the upper middle class do not have, and their jobs are demanding in an extreme way. The fault lies with those who want to use her as an example to hurt other women. Holding her responsible for what the media will do seems wrong to me. This is separate from her public statements about feminism, for which she is responsible.
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“I fail to see how Mayer’s estimate about taking a 2 week leave is written somewhere in stone. Rather, the CEO has a duty not to send the company’s stock price into a nosedive, so she’s wise to measure her words. The boss can change her mind if the postpartum reality isn’t as predicted.”
No kidding. Unless somebody’s going to be staking out her office parking lot and hacking her work email, nobody outside the company is going to be the wiser if the “two weeks” turns out to be poetic license.
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She’s a role model for the woman who wants to reproduce but still wants to be a CEO. Such women exist, and even more women who won’t make that choice (or have the opportunity to make it) would like to dream of that possibility. Thirty years go, the opportunity wouldn’t have been possible. Now it is, and she’s proving it.
And, she’s not choosing career over family or her child. She’s choosing career (and the opportunity to make a difference in the world — mind you, it’s hard to assign that to Yahoo, but, if she’s responsible for the google search page something she gets credit for, she’s already made a difference) over being the primary caregiver of her child (or at least she’s saying she is right now). That might not be a role model for any particular woman, who wants to be a primary caregiver. But, that’s not everyone. There are women who dream of making a difference in the world more than they dream of cuddling their babies. Babies need to be cuddled but it doesn’t have to be the woman who gives birth to them who does it.
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I think it is possible to be CEO and still take 3 months maternity leave. People like to think that their jobs and their companies will evaporate without their 24/7 attention. Really, nobody is all that important.
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There are lots of people who are that important, whose companies would evaporate if they took 3 month leave. Usually they are small businesses though (of various sorts).
And a fair number of people who are that important.
And is 3 months magical, or is the same true for 6 months, 1 year, . . . .
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I agree with bj on this: that CEO’s can’t leave for 3 months. Not at this level of an operation. I don’t know if there is any for profit public company that could operate without their CEO on deck for a few months. Perhaps an NGO or a not-for-profit or government agency.
And on the choice between career and primary caregiver – there’s a lot of room between the two poles. My point is that being the CEO of a public company is at one end of the spectrum. So someone (male or female) who chooses to do that for paid work is not someone who for me represents some role model of “having it all” or “how to do it”. Just someone who is continuing on in a tradition of demanding jobs that men have done for a zillion years at the expense of time with family (putting aside primary caregiver roles).
Where I agree with Laura is this – although I don’t think CEO’s CAN be away on parental leave, I DO believe that it’s a ridiculous set up to have careers that require that – that you can’t be away.
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I agree with bj (again!) that Mayer is a rolemodel to a small but real set of women. Not your average professional woman. We shouldn’t expect that her situation adhere to what the average woman wants and we also shouldn’t deny that women with high-level career aspirations will be following how this goes and hoping that it works.
I think feminism is big enough to include 1) women who want to reach the highest levels of power under the traditional male model AND 2) women that want to change the traditional male model of success because it is incompatible with family life.
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I’m more disappointed that she says she isn’t a feminist because that’s a negative word
If I thought that the “feminist” position was “Make the personal decision that will promote the policies that feminists want,” instead of “trust each woman to make the decision that is right for her,” then I would probably say I wasn’t a feminist either. She’s a person making a choice, not a sitcom character where the scriptwriter’s choice can have broad social implications.
Meanwhile, let’s all hope that her decision to carry the baby to term isn’t also setting back the pro-choice movement.
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So are we at three months because of FMLA? Most people I know take 6 weeks, because that’s the amount of time they can get paid or partially paid. Three months is a luxury for most of us. I honestly couldn’t be away from my job that long. I know I could by law, but my department would suffer and the catch up would feel impossible. I’m in charge of 35 employees and a $4M budget , nothing compared to a CEO.
I can’t imagine even six weeks without me working in some sort of capacity even if it was a small fraction of the time. I’m thrilled when I have an entire week off at once. It’s not that my company wouldn’t support a longer leave, it’s just the nature of the business makes it hard for us to be gone for long periods of time. Instead I take a lot of four day weekends and maybe one or two weeks throughout the year. I think comparing leaves is kind of apples and oranges. I think a company should promote work/life balance and that should reflect how the employee’s need and responsibilities play out.
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I hold it against Mayer that she wanted to reject the word feminist. Because, she might, have sophisticated reasons for rejecting the label, but when she rejects the label, what most people hear is that she’s anti-feminist (whatever they, not her, see feminist as meaning).
The same is true for other labels that one might have a reasoned explanation for rejecting (say, the person of Jewish descent who doesn’t want to call themselves Jewish, because they’re an athiest). If you reject being labeled in a “suspect” group you give ammunition to the group that opposes the “suspect” group (even if that wasn’t your intent).
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Regarding the importance of individuals and how to cope with their leaves and responsibilities, I agree with Lisa that different leaves are like apples and oranges. As we discussed in the Slaughter debate, different jobs have different demands (one might allow you to take days off at will, as long as you are willing to work evenings, weekends, other times to make them up, like faculty positions sometimes do, while another might require you to be there when you are scheduled, but not demand significant work out of that time, like nursing or child care). The effects of an employee taking leave depend on the job and how the work is structured.
I think a legitimate question is to ask how to structure jobs to give more flexibility. In many cases, it’s reasonable to talk about how to split the work so that someone else can do it, systems for delegation and coordination that allow more than one person to do a job, so that people can work part time, or full time with more balance, or take leave. I think we do this less than we should. But, I also think there are some jobs that are extremely difficult to balance with other responsibilities (including taking leave) and that when our discussion centers on those jobs, we actually undermine our ability to discuss the balancing in multitudes of jobs that could be made more life-friendly.
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Funny. There’s an entirely different discussion going on my Facebook page. A group of women academic who get the entire semester off think that 6 months should be the minimum that all women should get. Anything less is barbaric.
I think all women should get 3 months of paid leave paid for the gov’t. Because of the c-sections, I needed a lot of recovery. Plus all the surgery after Jonah’s birth. My pee left my body into a tube which fed into a bag strapped to my thigh for weeks after his birth. Imagine if someone had bumped into me on a subway? Shudder. The hormones are crazy. Some friends were plunged into weeks of depression. I went the other way and was high on bliss. If I only had 2 weeks off, I would have cried for days.
I hope that Mayer is honest with the press about all this. If she returns to work, but in some sort of flexible, dial it in from home sort of way, then I hope she tells everyone.
People like to think that they are indispensible to their jobs. And then the company fires them and replaces them in a week and things carry on. Steve’s major financial business fires and hires top executives every day. It has no impact on the rest of the company. Mayer is probably going to have her second in command make a lot of decisions in the post birth period, but probably won’t tell anyone about it, because it’s bad for the image of the company.
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“A group of women academic who get the entire semester off think that 6 months should be the minimum that all women should get.”
Well, if you’re all comfortable with the idea of women not getting hired to begin with because they’re too much trouble, carry on.
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I don’t think I’m indispensible, I think the position is, and they would have to replace me if I were gone longer than a couple of weeks for sure. Unfortunately, in a non-profit there just isn’t much flexing to offer someone else more money to do my job.
But, they encourage me to take shorter weeks, leave in the middle of the day for a kids event or even lunch with my mom. I’ve taken every Thursday off for the last month to get my daughter ready for college. My boss encourages me, and knows that I put in long hours on the days I’m there. I think we need to make it work based on the companies needs and the person’s. I’m lucky my life and work mesh right now.
And I honestly can’t imagine going back to work after 3 months or 6 months. I stayed home for 12 years until all of my children were in school. We suffered financially for that decision, I suffered professionally, but it was the right move for the time for us. It’s not a universal way for everyone. I was lucky.
If I had a baby now at this point in my life, (I’m sole bread winner) so that wouldn’t even be an option for us. Also if I had a baby now, I’d be on the cover of the world weekly news or you guys would base some church on my offspring- these eggs are getting old.
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This conversation is really interesting. Canadian high-performing women are in short supply so I’m not sure what they do about their leaves, but I am guessing they don’t really take them.
How Cdn mat leave works: the mother gets 15 weeks. The remaining 35 weeks can be split any way you like as long as each adult takes one continuous chunk and informs his/her workplace of the time in writing in advance…the father can take 15 weeks simultaneously to the mother for example. In practice, a lot of women take the full year…often ’cause they’re the lower earner anyway, but also for breastfeeding etc.
Anyways, with a full year a lot of companies hire a full-year contract replacement and in my opinion it’s win-win – someone gets a year’s experience, it’s worth training for a year’s contract, and you get some fresh blood in without having to commit or fire your old blood. In middle management it’s doable.
However emotionally it is kind of fraught…a lot of promotion-hungry people take those contracts and then you come back in the middle of separation anxiety with a year’s inexperience and now you’re the wunderkind’s replacement and it can feel scary. I would not trade it for the US system. But I think if I were a high-profile CEO, I would not be taking as long as leave as I was entitled to.
Technically companies cannot fire people for having been on mat leave, but Ways Are Found sometimes.
Also Cdn mat leave tops out at something like $420/week. Some companies top up for a bit, particularly US companies, oddly.
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