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Former Yahoo CEO Needed AI to Help Describe What Makes Her Own Daughter Special (gizmodo.com)
submitted 1 week ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] -3 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (14 children)

I think this sucks but I also think the headlines have never given Mayer a fair shake at anything and that also sucks. "Marissa Mayer dared to speak and we're here to get snarky about it" could apply to almost every headline I've seen that was about her. And this story charges straight to "girlboss." Ugh. Isn't there enough to criticize here without jumping straight to the kind of casual sexism we all laughed at in the 1980s? It's unprofessional.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (13 children)

    I remember that she was getting a lot of positive press because she was public about pregnancy or something but returned to full time work like 5 days after she gave birth which is dystopian as hell.

    A real “girl boss” in a position of power and wealth and public visibility needs to use that platform to take a year or two of maternity leave and spend that time caring for the child and fighting to get those rights to everyone.

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  • [–] 8 points 1 week ago (2 children)

    Didn't they put a nursery in her office or something? The average worker isn't getting the accommodations she had.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (9 children)

    She got press that pointed out she was a CEO who had dared to get pregnant. It seemed to me they were pointing out that 1) a CEO who took time off to give birth was bad, and 2) a woman who wouldn't take more maternity leave was also bad.

    Way too much press about her was about her personal-life decisions rather than business prospects.

    A real “girl boss” ...

    I read "girlboss" as strictly perjorative.

    needs to use that platform to take a year or two of maternity leave

    This is tantamount to saying: a CEO mom is impossible.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (8 children)

    This is tantamount to saying: a CEO mom is impossible.

    Uhhh... No, it is not.

    Yahoo offers a generous 16 week maternity leave, and she took 2 and worked from home during. She said it wasn't part of the consideration of giving her the job when she was six months pregnant, do you honestly believe that?

    Do you honestly believe her offering to take only 2 weeks "leave" while working was a feminist or woman empowering decision? Not a compromise to land the job that wouldn't have been offered if she wanted to take time to be with her child instead?

    You and her are the ones perpetuating "CEO mom is impossible", unless they take barely any time off to be a mom and still work remotely while being "off".

    I believe a mom can be CEO AND take the full maternity leave while knowing how to delegate and have minimal need to check-in for those 16 weeks. You believe she has to act like she didn't just have a baby and return to work as soon as humanly possible in order to be a CEO.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago* (7 children)

    I don't see how you get this attitude, those conclusions, from anything I wrote.

    Yahoo offers a generous 16 week maternity leave

    Which is just a little bit shy of two years

    Do you honestly believe her offering to take only 2 weeks “leave” while working was a feminist or woman empowering decision?

    No. But I think that decision was up to her and that the press should have treated it as not-newsworthy. Any amount of maternity leave that she chose was doomed to be criticized by somebody as the wrong amount. And so, it was.

    You and her are the ones perpetuating “CEO mom is impossible”

    No. CompactFlax posited that "A real 'girl boss' in a position of power and wealth and public visibility needs to use that platform to take a year or two of maternity leave," and I'm just observing there was no realistic possibility of that happening. If this is what you demand from a CEO mom, well, you're not getting that.

    You believe she has to act like...

    I don't understand how you think you know any such thing. I comprehensively don't think like this. I don't think there's any "has to," I think those arrangements should have been her own decision and it would be better to have minimal commentary on it.

    The fact that everyone feels entitled to weigh in on her work/life balance and parenting decisions is the problem. Criticize her for her business decisions, criticize her for being an AI pusher, that's fine, that's appropriate.

    When criticism focuses on "CEO mommy" topics, that is a mode and angle of criticism that no man ever seems to face in the tech/biz news. That is sexism. Obviously. What else would that be?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (6 children)

    I was reacting to your wild conclusion.

    "Choosing" your career over time with your newborn despite having the means to do so it's not "feminism" or "woman empowerment", it's capitalism and shitty parenting. I didn't like that you are conflating them.

    At best I could accept the argument that she calculated the wealthy she could accumulate will serve her children long term better than spending time parenting them and leaving them with financial instability... But then that's not a choice, that's a difficult position forced on her but capitalism.

    The idea that she "chose" to work through the two weeks and then return back to full time work and that choice being empowering is ridiculous. The idea that pointing that out is the equivalent of saying women can't be CEOs is sexist.

    I took less than 2 weeks of paternity leave, but I would never suggest I chose that. I chose not to lose my job and keep a roof over my newborn's head, but that wasn't much of a choice.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (5 children)

    You don't understand where I'm coming from because you've completely taken it for granted that of course Mayer's every move should be publicly dissected under a microscope, not just for business soundness, but also to check if she's setting a luminous enough example for all other women everywhere.

    Which is a thing I'm refusing to do.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (4 children)

    I've never considered her or put her under any kind of lense, I didn't know who she was or her story until I stumbled across this post. I don't care about CEOs in general and couldn't name any except the openly evil ones.

    Nice deflection though. I'm only engaging because your rhetoric frustrated me, when someone goes out of their way to accuse someone of being sexist and start bending logic to defend a woman's actions not by their merits but for the mere fact that they were performed by a woman, it stands out as sexist.

    You're overcompensating. Was the girl boss comment unnecessary? Possibly, I don't know if she ever referred to herself as "girl boss" explicitly... It's irrelevant though, because the meat of the argument is that she literally said "Women, this is my own bias, tend to take more photos and are more visual, and so being able to work with A.I. in a visual medium is fun".

    She was being sexist, and you ignored that and flipped the table and was outraged that the author called her girl boss.

    Not only is she suggesting we offload our emotional load to AI, she's pitching that as a woman empowering move. You should not be defending her, quite the opposite.

    I tried to look at old articles to see the sexism you claimed was displayed, which is how I discovered that she was 6 months pregnant when she took the job, but I couldn't find any. Please correct me and cite some.

    What I found is opinion pieces that referenced sexist discourse online and the stock market reaction to her. No shit people are sexist and would have been sexiest in their rhetoric, but that's not what you claimed, you claimed every headline you could see criticized her for existing as a woman.

    You don't have to defend every woman just because they are women, that's as sexist as degrading them for the same reason.

    At best, she's a victim of a sexist world who accepted perpetuating the sexist status quo for the sake of her kids, and at worst she's a terrible parent, but nothing about her story makes her a feminist champion.

    The first woman to vote wasn't a hero, the women who fought for suffrage rights were. The first woman CEO isn't a hero, she's just a CEO who happens to be a woman, and she didn't use her position to set a better precedent for women.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (3 children)

    the meat of the argument is that she literally said “Women, this is my own bias, tend to take more photos and are more visual, and so being able to work with A.I. in a visual medium is fun”.

    This is the first time you're bringing any of this up here in this thread with me. "The meat of the argument?" You have got to be joking.

    Please correct me and cite some.

    I've already got enough homework to keep me busy thanks

    You don’t have to defend every woman just because they are women

    I'm not "defending" her. ("I think this [turn toward AI] sucks" was what I said.) My comment was a criticism of the headline and the tone of this story. Of the media. How could I possibly have made that any clearer?

    At best, she’s a victim of a sexist world who accepted perpetuating the sexist status quo for the sake of her kids, and at worst she’s a terrible parent, but nothing about her story makes her a feminist champion.

    So. There's that judgement imperative I was talking about.

    Wrap your head around this: I don't care if she's a perfect feminist paragon or not. I don't care if she's perpetuating the status quo to the approximately the same extent nearly everyone else is. I don't care if she's just as disconnected a parent as every other stinking-rich mom or dad in this materialist culture of ours.

    And neither should the tech / biz media, or the chattering commentariat.

    Unless we're all going to consistently apply those same questions and judgements to the men who keep getting in front of cameras to flog their tech junk, too.

    When was the last time you got so worked up about Altman's work-life balance? About Zuckerberg's parenting choices? Is anyone terribly worried that Sundar Pichai isn't feminist enough?

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  • [–] 1 point 1 week ago (2 children)

    This is the first time you're bringing any of this up here in this thread with me. "The meat of the argument?" You have got to be joking.

    Not my argument, the article's. That you dismissed as sexist because of one word you didn't like.

    I've already got enough homework to keep me busy thanks

    Stay in school!

    And neither should the tech / biz media, or the chattering commentariat.

    Something you keep insisting is true, and despite responding with long comments, you don't have the time to Google any evidence of.

    When was the last time you got so worked up about Altman's work-life balance? About Zuckerberg's parenting choices? Is anyone terribly worried that Sundar Pichai isn't feminist enough?

    I have yet to run into someone defending them as a good parents with that lack of balance as evidence... When you make that comment I'll make the same argument again.

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  • [–] 0 points 6 days ago (1 child)

    Something you keep insisting is true, and despite responding with long comments, you don’t have the time to Google any evidence of.

    Google it? It's here. It's you.

    I have yet to run into someone defending them as a good parents

    Yes, exactly. I wish you could hear yourself.

    When you make that comment I’ll make the same argument again.

    What "argument?"

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  • [–] 1 point 6 days ago

    Google it? It's here. It's you.

    I'm not a reporter or a news media outlet, that was your repeated claim that I refuted.

    Yes, exactly. I wish you could hear yourself.

    Have you lost track of the discussion already?

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