I wanted to share this open letter to the new CEO of Yahoo, who happens to be pregnant and also plans to only take a few weeks off for maternity leave.
I wanted to share this open letter to the new CEO of Yahoo, who happens to be pregnant and also plans to only take a few weeks off for maternity leave.
admin / wonderful grape / 20724 posts
She has some good and fair points, but wow... that open letter was really condescending!
wonderful pomelo / 30692 posts
Here's another article about it from a different perspective:
http://www.cnn.com/2012/07/18/opinion/coontz-yahoo-marissa-mayer/index.html?hpt=hp_c2
papaya / 10560 posts
Interesting! It is killing me to take off 6 weeks for maternity, and I am going to try and swing 8 if I can. I really can't imagine taking less though!!
GOLD / eggplant / 11517 posts
I wish we'd all get with the program and celebrate the fact that this woman has the CHOICE to do whatever she wants in regards to her maternity leave. And she chooses to start back to work after a few weeks. Good for, if that is what she wants to do.
cantaloupe / 6885 posts
I saw yesterday on People.com this related article : "Should Marissa Mayer Take a Shortened, Working Maternity Leave?"
http://celebritybabies.people.com/2012/07/17/marissa-mayer-google-yahoo-baby-boy-due-october-poll/
My first thought was: "THIS is news???"
My second thought was: "Who cares???"
IMO, It's no one's business except, her, her husband, and (to a lesser extent) her company.
I feel very fortunate to live in Canada where we get 1 year maternity leave, IF we choose to take it. I will probably take the full year, but my mother was back to work within 3 weeks for all of us - as a self-employed business owner, she didn't want to be away that long. HER choice!
pomelo / 5178 posts
@highwire: Ditto. She's a grown adult; I'm sure she can figure out for herself how much time is appropriate to take off post-partum.
honeydew / 7444 posts
@char54: I don't know if anything on People's Celebrity Babies site can be considered "news". LOL. Like you, i feel fortunate to get 1 year mat leave, and even more fortunate that my company tops up my salary.
So much for furthering the cause for American women though.
squash / 13199 posts
Experience is the best teacher, No one can really understand how a woman feels postpartum until you have been through it. So its a bit harsh to expect her to know everything ahead of time. I dont think its a big deal if she says she doesnt want to take time off, good for her. I wish women like her in high positions would take more time off and would fight for more time off for the rest of us but its not my call
wonderful pomelo / 30692 posts
@Mrsbells: That's basically what the CNN article was saying. It said that it was sure she and her baby would be just fine taking a short maternity leave and what-not, but that by her doing that, it might send a message to the lower-level employees that that is what is expected of them.
kiwi / 538 posts
I think this sets a horrible precedent. She sounds like a workaholic and I have spent my entire working life working for people like that- it's a nightmare. I read the "Can Women Have it All?" article in the Atlantic a few weeks ago and the whole point of it was that no, women can’t have it all the way that the American workforce is today. We need women in executive positions to start acting like being a parent is just as important as being a good employee. If they hired her knowing she was pregnant, she had the ability to say "I'll be taking my full 6/8 weeks like I'm entitled to" and she didn’t. She basically said “As soon as I pop that kid out I’ll be checking my Blackberry” like someone’s life depends on her answering an email. Maternity leave is not a vacation- the purpose of it is to allow yourself to physically recover from giving birth and spend time bonding with your child. I think it's sad she's acting like any job is more important than your health and your child.
pomegranate / 3388 posts
There was an hourlong show on Marissa Mayer on our local NPR station this morning. A lot of really good points were made. I agree with the article that it's great that America has progressed to the point where a pregnant woman can be hired as the CEO of a top company. Unfortunately, publicly stating that she'll be taking a 2-week maternity leave might not be sending the right message as far as what kind of leave the average woman *requires* after having a baby. Sure Ms. Mayer has the means to hire whatever help she can for herself and her baby during the postpartum period. But... I think many of us can attest to the fact that she has NO idea how she's going to feel both physically and mentally after her baby is born. I wish her the best of luck, and I truly do hope that she is able to follow through on her plans, but I really hope that her employers (or shareholders?) don't judge her if she has to scale back some of her plans in the immediate months/weeks following her birth.
pomelo / 5178 posts
I guess my biggest issue with this is that no male CEO ever has been called out for going back to work within weeks of the birth of his child. Now, granted, men don't usually have a physical recovery following birth, but from my own experience, not all women even need two weeks to recover from birth. I was out bowling 5 days after having my son, and I felt great! If women can physically recover within that time period, why is that that males and females are held to different standards as to what is acceptable in negotiating working and parenthood?
Really what this shows me is that, despite our attitudes that men and women should be equal in all things, there still a bias that women are expected to take on the majority of the child rearing. Every day men go back to work within weeks (or days or even hours!) of their children being born, and it's not an issue, on either the micro or macro scale. However, a women chooses to take a short leave, and people get all up in arms that she's somehow overerestimating (typo, oops!) herself and injuring the population at large by not taking a full leave.
In my ideal world, both men and women would be allowed to take as much time as they need/want to adjust to parenthood. However, if we're ever going to get to that ideal, we need to change our views on equality in parenthood and start allowing men the same opportunities, and holding them to the same standards, as women.
GOLD / wonderful olive / 19030 posts
I think she's a grown woman who can make her own decisions, she might change her mind after giving birth, that is her option as a woman/mother. I don't think it's our place to comment on whether it is enough time or not. Personally, I want to take more, but I also make about 1/64th of what she does
pineapple / 12526 posts
I don't think this is anyone else's business. This is between her, her husband and their child.
apricot / 359 posts
@dookie32: The thing is, this is not just ANY job, but likely her dream job. She also never said that it's more important than her health and her child. This is the first ever in history, that a female is hired as CEO for a fortune 500 company. I find Marissa's passion for creating the best user experience at Google, and now Yahoo, really inspirational. It's her decision, and nobody else's, to decide what she should do. I'm not a workaholic, but I can appreciate one's drive and love for their job!
kiwi / 538 posts
@Mrs. Lantern: Yes this is true- it's not any job. It's a highly stressful job and thus the reason why she shouldn't jump back into it after going through an experience like giving birth. I'm sure most doctors would agree that stress is probably not helpful for recovery. And like some other people said, it's sort of naive of her to think that she's going to feel good enough in a week or 2 to feel like working when she's a FTM. She has set up this expectation now that if she doesn't come back quickly people are going to be like "see I told you a woman couldn't do this".
Yes it's her decision but she is also the 1st female CEO and with that comes a lot of responsibility whether she wants it or not. People will be looking at her and saying, "If she only needed 2 weeks off, than why would anyone need 6 weeks?" It shouldn't be that way but it is.
admin / wonderful grape / 20724 posts
Marissa is super hardcore; she regularly works 90 hour weeks. When Google was starting, she says she worked 130 hour weeks:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/48213365
<< Many entrepreneurs don't even think twice when it comes to working around the clock. Marissa Mayer, Google's 20th employee and current vice president of location and local services, is no exception. When Google was a young company, she worked 130 hours per week and often slept at her desk.
"For my first five years at Google, I pulled an all-nighter every week," Mayer said in a recent talk at New York's 92Y cultural center. "It was a lot of hard work." >>
Someone that would never take a long maternity leave!
GOLD / squash / 13464 posts
Sorry but it's not Marissa's responsibility to worry about how her personal choices affect other people's views on maternity leave. She will do what is best for her and her family, end of story. And yes, that article was extremely condescending.
olive / 52 posts
I agree with @Honeybee. If a man was appointed CEO, and his wife was pregnant and having the kid soon after his job began, would this even be an issue? I think she should choose what's right for her and her family and her career, and everyone else should do the same.
squash / 13199 posts
@Honeybee: I really dont see how you can compare the length of time a man takes off for maternity leave vs the length of time a maternal mother takes off. Thats like comparing apples to oranges. You arent even healed two weeks after having a baby... men dont have to heal physically and dont have raging hormones etc.
pomelo / 5331 posts
How much maternity leave a brand-new, high-powered CEO of a failing company takes does not affect me at all. To that end, how much maternity leave ANYBODY takes doesn't affect me. All these articles are condescending. They're either assuming she's a moron who simply can't understand what it's like to be a REAL mother, or taking great pains to reassure everybody that no worries, she will still be a top performer even though she has this pesky mom thing going on! Honestly, a female executive taking practically no leave and still working through it (which, come on, is going to mean her working on shit and taking conference calls at home in bed, not having high-powered lunches in de la Renta and cardigans, let's have common sense here) is NOT news. These are the people who never take vacations. Nobody is going to deny you and me maternity leave just based on the fact that this chick -- WHO MAKES MORE THAN I OWE ON MY MORTGAGE -- didn't take any.
pomelo / 5178 posts
@Mrsbells: The only difference between the leave a birthing parent takes post-partum and the leave a non-birthing parent takes post-partum is that birthing parents have to go through a physical recovery. And if the issue here is of a medical, physical recovery, how much leave Marissa Mayer does or does not take has absolutely no bearing on how much leave someone else takes. As soon as she is physically healed and cleared by a doctor to return to her job (which, let's be honest, is an office job and probably not that physically demanding), she can and it would have no effect whatsoever on what would be expected from other women (since they would, presumably, also have to be physically cleared by their doctors for their specific type of work). People heal at different rates, so even if there is a "standard" healing time, some people may be recovered sooner and some people may need more time; one person healing faster and returning to work sooner has nothing to do with the another person's healing/recovery time.
But maternity leave is not mainly for physical recovery, and that's where people are getting upset. From the articles linked above, commentators are insinuating that either a)she won't be emotionally/mentally ready to return to work in a few weeks or b)that her short leave will set up an expectation that all women should be fully prepared to return to work a few weeks post-partum. Except that men (who are facing most of the same issues of adjusting to parenthood, bonding with baby, and caring for a demanding newborn) already take little or no time off and it's not even questioned. If two people of opposite genders are taking the same amount of leave for the same reasons, and only one person is criticized for that choice, it brings to light the true inequality and sexism of the situation. Mothers are expected to take more time off, not for physical recovery, but because of expectations of childrearing duties. Marissa Mayer is doing exactly what male CEOs before her have done time and time again; only she is being criticized for it, and that's the difference.
admin / wonderful grape / 20724 posts
@Honeybee: I agree with a lot of your points, but wanted to point out that it's incredibly physically stressful to be a CEO of a tech company. Stress itself is very physically demanding, and it gets harder and harder to deal with as you age too.
cherry / 220 posts
Just wanted to point out that since she won't be at Yahoo for at least a year before the baby, she wouldn't qualify for FMLA anyway and her job wouldn't be legally protected.
Of course, if she wanted to take more time off Yahoo could work with her IF they chose to, but they aren't obligated to. I assume she understood that when she took the new job and it wasn't an issue for her.
I don't really care what she does with her life, as long as she doesn't come out publicly saying that all women should follow her example (which I doubt she will do).
eggplant / 11824 posts
@Honeybee: I totally agree with you, and your points. There is a lot of ingrained sexism regarding pregnancy and parenting.
GOLD / wonderful coffee bean / 18478 posts
It is nobody's business how long she wants to take off and she is an insane workaholic so she'll work it out but I agree that it sends the message that women in America don't need to take a decent amount of time for maternity leave. It's the whole "having it all" thing or "if she can do it, why can't you all?". I don't expect her to join the fight for longer maternity leaves but I guess it would be nice if she did!
blogger / wonderful cherry / 21616 posts
I agree with the others on how it's no one else's business at all and I think it's entirely rude for the nation to be telling her she's basically stupid for thinking she can take a shortened maternity leave. Although there are many of who were still in some amount of pain by the six-week mark, there are many who bounce-back very quickly and sometimes by choice. One mom I know is a full-time pilates instructor and after her first child, she was back in the gym after one week! I'm sure her fast healing had something to do with the fact that she is a work-out-aholic, but some women set their mind to it and get it done.
This woman sounds incredibly accomplished, confident and she knows what she is capable of. I'm sure she will be just fine.
pomegranate / 3503 posts
I personally (especially having had 2 kids), would not be able to go back to work so soon but it's between her and her family what she chooses to do. As long as she's not enforcing her standards onto her staff or advocating that all women should take shortened maternity leaves, then it really is none of our business.
wonderful pear / 26210 posts
@Adira: I totally agree. It's the message that it sends to the lower ranking employees that doesn't sit well with me. If your boss doesn't take the full amount of leave they're entitled to, it could be possible that they wouldn't support you taking the maximum allotted leave.
We're never going to get anywhere as a country wrt to maternity leave policies if the women at the top don't set the example of making longer leaves acceptable.
Plus, if Mayer's taking such a short leave, she's got help from someone to make it work...not always an option for lower wage earning mothers.
blogger / nectarine / 2010 posts
I just hope she leaves open the option to stay out longer, if she changes her mind. She's a bright woman, but there are tons of bright people at Yahoo! and no one is so important that they can't take time for family; they'll manage without her.
I worked through my 12 weeks of leave and it was a total circus to try to get just four hours of solid productivity in each week!
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