17 Jul Marissa Mayer is Six Months Pregnant: Hooray for Yahoo!
Marissa Mayer (Photo credit: Giorgio Montersino)
When Marissa Mayer was announced as the new Yahoo! CEO yesterday, there was a collective wow. A 37 year old woman! An engineer! Another role model – in Silicon Valley, a place in dire need of more women in top positions. And then a little part of me got greedy and thought, can you imagine if she were a mom too? We could watch as she juggled and managed her inevitably hectic life.
But then last night news broke that Marissa Mayer is six months pregnant. This is too good to be true! Why should we care? Because women all over this country who seek employment while pregnant worry, obsess and hide their growing stomachs with the valid fear that they will be discriminated against. And now Yahoo! has hired a six months pregnant woman to run their 20 Billion dollar company.
One Yahoo! employee I spoke with today said that the board’s decision to hire Mayer is: “consistent with the wonderfully supportive experience I had at Yahoo! for both my maternity leaves. Thoughtful bosses, great colleagues who pitched in, flexibility after returning.” Companies that wish to tap the talent of the modern workforce should aspire to have such unprompted feedback from an employee.
As for the abbreviated “few weeks” maternity leave Mayer plans to take, this is the norm for most of America who cannot afford to take unpaid leave or for entrepreneurs for whom there is no such thing. So while it would be great to see Yahoo’s CEO take three months off, this is simply not practical in today’s world. Change comes in pieces.
Hiring Mayer is a win for Yahoo! and a win for women. Along with rooting for Mayer’s success, I will be rooting for Yahoo’s too.
Samantha Ettus is a bestselling author, media personality and speaker, passionate about helping working moms to design a successful and happy lifestyle. Connect with her at www.samanthaettus.com or @samanthaettus.
To read this article on Forbes, please click here.
Samantha Ettus is a bestselling author & corporate speaker. The Pie Life: A Guilt-Free Recipe for Success and Satisfaction will be released in September.
