Marissa Mayer, I Say Thank You

I could not be more delighted about the furor over Marissa Mayer’s nixing of the telework option at Yahoo! Really, it’s all good. Anything that puts the focus on women, motherhood and work makes me gleeful. The fact that these issues finally get a public airing has been so long in coming. Fully integrating women into all the places power resides is a messy, tortured and painful process. It creates a lot of drama. There will be yelling and screaming. There HAS to be yelling and screaming, because it hasn’t been done before. It upsets the prevailing power structure. It makes people uncomfortable in many different ways. A bit of a dust up is to be expected.

Reactions to Mayer have been all over the map. A torrent of opinions have been unleashed, and I have a few of my own. Here’s one - Marissa Mayer is not anybody’s poster child for momism, feminism or workers’ rights. She’s the boss, and that’s all. She can do whatever she likes with Yahoo! Calling employees away from their home computers and into the office is just fine if that’s what she feels the profitable operation of her company needs. As the CEO with legal obligations to shareholders, she is required to do what she thinks will make the company profitable. She may be a woman, she may be a mother, but she refused to call herself a feminist in the the fabulous PBS documentary about the women’s movement, MAKERS, and she never signed on as an advocate for working women with children. If you are like most women in America, with children, a job, and not enough hours in the day, she is not going to help you. I know, I know. The truth hurts. But there it is.

However, if the media wants to splash pictures of her all over, and writing about how she used some of her own millions to build a nursery for her new baby next to her office, it can only help. What mother, I ask you, gets to BUILD a nursery next to her office?? The contrast between Mayer as an icon of corporate excess on the one hand, and the child care nightmares most of us face on the other, is so striking, a member of the U.S. Congress might even be able to grasp it. If building your own nursery at the office is what it takes to create some semblance of work/family balance, what chance do American mothers have? Well, I’ll tell you - our chance lies in shifts to public policy. We will have to rely on our own political activism to implement workplace policies like paid sick days, paid leave, flexible schedules and part-time worker parity. We have to make working for money and raising children and/or caring for family, sometimes at the same time, sometimes one or the other, the new normal, the standard practice, the cultural norm. It has been our private reality for decades, of course, but that reality must be reflected in our politics, institutions and public life as well.

I wish Marissa Mayer all the luck in the world. She has two really hard jobs - fixing a company and raising a fully functional human being. I have two really hard jobs also - advocating for mothers’ rights and raising two fully functional human beings. The mothers she employs may find life more difficult now that they can’t work from home. But if the decision of their boss makes the critical needs of all parents more obvious, and the obstacles families face at every turn more challenging, my job just got a little easier. Maybe more mothers will take matters into their own hands and throw their political weight around. The only people who can help us is … us.

‘Til next time,

Your (Wo)Man in Washington

 

 

About Valerie Young

Valerie Young is a public policy analyst who is mad as hell about the status of women in the United States and is doing her part to promote social justice by arming mothers with information and a healthy dose of outrage. She works for the NAMC as the Advocacy Coordinator of their MOTHERS initiative. Follow her on Twitter @WomanInDC and on Facebook as Valerie Young and Your (Wo)Man in Washington.

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  • Janice Lynch Schuster

    I encountered major child care challenges this week, and could only have managed them (and my work life), courtesy of my employer’s telework policy. Much as I enjoy going to my office, I also enjoy the focus of being at home some days, where I can manage my household and my workload-all at the same time. I think that Mayer’s effort to build morale will sink it among caregivers-mothers, fathers, and everyone who struggles to care for another human being.

  • Rosannew1

    Couldn’t agree more. We cannot expect all women to think and act in lockstep any more than we would expect all (insert ethnic group here) to do so. Right — she’s the boss and is behaving as many bosses do. Too much precious energy is wasted on debating whether this is a proper position for a woman to take and whether it helps or hurts the cause. Let’s take the emphasis off her gender and focus on the real-life effects of the policy. Then we can have a useful conversation.

  • http://www.motherscenter.org/blog Kate F. @katefineske

    You always have such a unique and eye opening take on every post. I absolutely loved reading through this because it says it like it is and follows your opinion with fact (in a great matter-of-fact-kind-of-way). Really Valerie, this is one of the best posts I’ve read on the topic of Mayer yet. THANK YOU.

  • Lisa

    Valerie- you said it all - and perfectly. The issues are so important - but it seems to take a media frenzy like this one to bring the issues up and front- Keep telling it like it is!

  • Lindaj

    You’re a better woman than I Valerie - staying so level-headed and looking at the advantages of the larger discussion made possible by Mayers’ no-work-from-home memo. I question the all-or-nothing feel of what I’ve read about her decision. Are there other ways to create the creative environment she wants without throwing all remote work under the bus? Was there any brainstorming among staff and management about ways to accomplish their goals without gutting an employment policy that is paramount to some employees? Research and other companies confirm the many benefits of offering good work/life options so there is an incentive to try to make it work before throwing it away.

  • http://twitter.com/WomenCongress Woman President 2016

    Mayer has a great idea. All employed parents of young children need onsite day care. Babies and toddlers are the smarter, most creative learners on earth. Interacting with them daily would inspire everyone.

    • Lindaj

      Unfortunately, onsite day care has proven to be very expensive for most employers. It has also been shown to be unmanageable for companies without a large enough number of employees. In Mayer’s case, is it child care that all employees could access? It didn’t sound like that in the reports but I don’t know the details. Absenting that option, a nationalized system to support affordable, accessibile, quality child care seems more and more necessary to explore.