Last year Anne-Marie Slaughter told us we can’t have it all. Personally, I believe her, which doesn’t mean we can’t have a great deal – you know, of the Holy Grail of family and career – but the myth of having it all, even at the highest levels, needs to exit Stage Left.
I might add that men don’t have it all either. They never did. Let’s face it: once upon a time, social norms suggested that the picture of their “all” was less inclusive of family engagement.
May we now turn our attention to Marissa Mayer, whose appointment as CEO of Yahoo while pregnant delighted the peanut gallery with hopes that she might be a beacon of change.
Well color me – make that us? – foolish.
Flash forward to recent news of Ms. Mayer, whose ban on remote work at Yahoo condemns a critical career option to many parents (in particular, mothers), now a No Go at her organization.
May all working moms and dads – without nannies, that is – now rise and bow our heads, shaking them wearily side to side, in dismal disbelief.
And a round of applause goes to Lisa Belkin for her take on the Mayer position as essentially ridiculous.
May I add a few terms that come to mind, say – disappointing, damaging, and ludicrous?
Sheryl Sandberg, “Leaning In”
Now mix in Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook, and the flurry of articles on her new book, “Lean In.” Plugged as something of an updated “feminist manifesto,” the New York Times, Forbes, the Washington Post and other publications have knocked Ms. Sandberg’s book and the woman herself, more or less asserting that what she’s after is self-promotion.
By way of example, Maureen Dowd’s opinion piece in the Times clearly disparages Ms. Sandberg’s undertaking. In “Pompom Girl For Feminism,” Ms. Dowd notes:
She [Sandberg] has a grandiose plan to become the PowerPoint Pied Piper in Prada ankle boots reigniting the women’s revolution — Betty Friedan for the digital age.
And that’s only the beginning, though Ms. Dowd nonetheless acknowledges that Sandberg
… knows there is slow evolution or even erosion in women’s progress in some areas… Her book is chockablock with good tips and insights, if a bit discouraging at times.
Prospective Employers, Working Reality
And the discouragements that Ms. Dowd refers to include discussing one’s plans for a family with a prospective employer – um, so as to change the paradigm.
Right.
Personally, I’d say that suggestion ranks as a sure-fire way not to get a job in this economy – or any economy – and is precisely the reason that asking family status questions violates the law. Of course, we all realize that the Internet weakens any such protections, as it’s a simple task to find out who’s married, who has kids, who is pregnant, and so on. We have only to look on… you guessed it… Ms. Sandberg’s very own social media platform, Facebook.
In referring to Ms. Sandberg’s suggestions in “Lean In,” Ms. Dowd goes on to point out:
… critics argue that her unique perch as a mogul with the world’s best husband to boot makes her tone-deaf to the problems average women face as they struggle to make ends meet in a rough economy, while taking care of kids, aging parents, and housework.”
Until I read the book, I’ll decline to comment further except to say that I’m curious to read it, and plan on doing so.
Earth to Marissa Mayer…
I may say amen to the recognition of “the problems average women face,” but Ms. Mayer’s position is both baffling and frightening. Banning work from home at Yahoo flies in the face of common sense, and undermines a significant structural change in the workforce that we’ve been slugging away at for decades, and one that is technologically straightforward, and good for both sexes.
That is not to say that she doesn’t have her reasons that we may not be aware of, that remote work isn’t without complications and downsides, but many of those complications are the responsibility of organizations themselves: the paradigm shift necessary on the part of senior executives and HR departments that have yet to learn to restructure jobs, much less retrain or hire managers who know how to supervise or assess remote performance.
And all of this seems utterly absurd to me, personally, having done both, dealt with both, and certainly not at such lofty levels but rather, in the trenches, where real work is actually produced.
Jessica Valenti Says “There is no perfect feminist”
Enter another perspective, a March 1st article by Jessica Valenti in the Washington Post, schooling us on the disadvantages of in-fighting.
In “Sheryl Sandberg isn’t the perfect feminist. So what?,” Ms. Valenti writes:
The feminist backlash against Sandberg… reveals a big and recurring problem within the movement: We hold leaders to impossible standards, placing perfection over progress…
There are certainly substantive critiques to be made about Sandberg’s book. “Lean In” is mostly tailored for married women with children and may not resonate with women who aren’t upper-middle-class or elite, something Sandberg acknowledges up front…
Critics have also knocked Sandberg for putting the onus on women to lift themselves up… But in her book, she frequently identifies how internal and external forces keep women from advancing in their careers. She also supports structural change, citing economic inequalities, discrimination, and the lack of paid maternity leave and affordable child care as problems that need to be addressed.
Who Speaks for Us? The “Average” Woman?
If you ask me, Ms. Valenti makes valid points. Disagreements are healthy; dissension that becomes the issue quickly dwarfs the issues themselves.
But.
Who speaks for the millions of women who can’t relate to Sandberg or Mayer or Slaughter?
While the media darlings in the executive suite are slugging it out, who speaks for women in their twenties or thirties, with babies and young children, and desperately in need of income whether they’re part of a “traditional” two parent family or otherwise?
Who speaks for women in their forties and fifties, looking to get back into the workforce after raising children, or those trying to hang on if they do have a job? What about the families struggling to foot the bill for kids in college – or young adults who are unable to find work? And the financial, logistical, emotional strain of dealing with aging parents? Aren’t these the realities of the “average” woman?
Who speaks for the women in their sixties and older, struggling to find a means to cover the bills? Who speaks for those of us who are widowed or divorced, or for that matter single, unable to pay for medical care? Who speaks for the millions of “independents” – who fall through any so-called social safety net in an unstable and insecure non-employee workforce?
Political Action? Grassroots Movements?
Who is addressing the political and structural issues in a real way? I see Lisa Belkin taking Mayer to task, and I’m grateful to see it because she should be taken to task.
And I haven’t included any mention of those who are living in abject poverty; a source of national shame that is a long and complex conversation in itself.
So what do we do? Is this divisive in-fighting or healthy debate? Should we be calling bullshit to those who would “lead” without practicable solutions, or is Ms. Sandberg assisting in keeping the conversation front and center, which is a positive, as Ms. Valenti believes?
How do we move from rhetoric to action – and whose rhetoric? Are we, the women and men who claim to care about options and family, as myopically gridlocked as an obstinate and in-fighting Congress?
Who do we look to as shining examples? As Ms. Dowd writes:
People come to a social movement from the bottom up, not the top down.
Why aren’t we taking to the streets? Raising hell with our political leaders? One million pissed off women? Why aren’t there 10 million or 20 million? And another 20 million pissed off men who also understand and believe?
Where do we find them, and then what?
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everytime we hear about feminist-in-fighting we want to go and wear a t-shirt with this FABULOUS image on it: http://cdn.buzznet.com/assets/imgx/1/7/0/8/2/6/0/1/orig-17082601.jpg
*smiling*
bravely.
while the World changes.
Yes.
But the world won’t change unless we change it, and our sons and daughters change it. We have so far to go.
Did you watch the PBS special on Women Makers. We have always fought with each other. Sad but true. On Marissa Mayer, she paid for a complete nursery right next to her office. Maybe she should think about providing one for free to all her employees who need one so they can come to work. The average worker can’t afford any of it and now with sequestration and the cutting of all the early education and childcare will make it impossible for women to work and make money after offsetting their childcare costs. Same old problems. Since we pay more to actors than teachers and value them more not much will change.
Yes, I did watch the PBS special, Madge. Fascinating to see certain things we “lived through” represented in the context of a condensed history. Actually, I’d like to watch it again. Your points about cultural values are well taken.
Mayer’s position, to me, is incomprehensible. And her comment on the PBS special that she doesn’t view herself as a feminist (something to that effect) now seems all the more obvious – and shameful.
Thank you for this DA. It is well written, well argued, and fun to read.
But I want to see if there is another way to think about this entirely.
I think there is a very simple solution that gets lost in the shuffle of agastness.
Businesses should be structured to start getting away from salaries and towards results. Salaries should be reserved for people who need to physically be in a place to make a business run – garage mechanics, waiters, pilots, doctors. Everyone else should be paid on results and whether they come into an office or not should get individually negotiated based on how that would help both the company’s and the individuals bottom line.
Marissa Mayer has the right to run Yahoo however she wants. ‘Cuz I guarantee she is being paid based on her results.
A lot of jobs that you would have thought would always need a person behind are going away. Especially the jobs where it could be any person doing it. Toll booth takers are fast becoming a thing of the past. Cashiers. Bankers. See the pattern? Anyone in transaction based fields. Because we’ve figured out a way replace a physical object (money) with technology. (I laugh when I go through the NYC toll booths. They electronically record my license plate and then send me a bill via snail mail. I do not believe that will last long.) The jobs of the future will be for the people who figure out what the robots can do.
Now look at the other side of that – people who get paid a lot of money because that individual needs to be a certain place at a certain time. Nobody is complaining that actresses or airline pilots can’t work from home.
Everyone in between should start to see a trend towards working for results. If you have a unique set of skills, and get hired to produce results – you can either choose to do that or not, and on any given day, do so accordingly. I just don’t think business infrastructures are set up to do that yet. But if that’s what you want, let’s start working towards it.
I don’t understand fights over words or positions.
Change what needs to be changed. Don’t work at Yahoo if you don’t want to. Build the future you do want.
I hear what you’re saying, Lisa. Clearly, some “jobs” (the definition of which is another discussion) are disappearing. The function required has changed, or can be accomplished in some mechanized fashion. In fact, remote work doesn’t apply in certain instances. However, I can hardly believe that’s the case for any number of positions that deal with technology.
Let me give you a few examples – lived many times over 20 years, with similar experiences related to me by others.
I worked in corporate marketing, marketing communications-related, and various software design & management positions for large companies. When my children were of a certain age, there were few (or too expensive) childcare options available, so I sought to work from a home office around my kids’ schedules, while still a full-time employee. I went into the office for key meetings (making special arrangements for the kids when needed), and thanks to good managers, a phone, and a computer – was easily able to participate with other members of my team, and produce all the required work for my position.
At another point in time, I asked to work part-time hours, as being full-time corporate employee and full-time mother was exhausting. Basically, the workload remained the same, but my salary and benefits were cut. After a few months of that (clearly ridiculous), I requested to be established as full-time, which basically meant I got full salary and benefits for what was roughly a 50-hour work week, and the same responsibilities – 90% of which were carried out (smoothly) for years – from a home office.
But I constantly had to reprove myself as each new manager was cycled through. I was one of very few (at the time) who worked from home; my work product spoke for itself.
Fast forward a few years as an independent consultant. Some of the organizations I work with do not want employees. They want 1099 workers as it’s cheaper and easier. Marketing work, communications work, content work, web work, quality assurance work, social media work – all of these are easily accomplished virtually anywhere. Yet some of the organizations (certainly not all) still want you in a cubicle during certain times – and there’s literally no reason for it when you can have face time via Skype or other means, 24/7 access through social media not to mention our smart phones, etc.
The need for that face time is old school lack of managerial skills – not necessarily the fault of the manager, but still an evolving cultural issue.
As to your focus on results – I fully agree. But time-in-chair does not equate to results produced. And for many, results produced are best handled when not dealing with hours of commuting, or frantically trying to schedule pickups for children, or taking an elder parent to the doctor. In one instance that comes to mind immediately (a friend, highly qualified and well known in her field, dealing with this currently), time-in-chair is, in fact, counter to producing the results required.
Back to the issue of “job” versus “work.”
We continue to see a rigid orientation around jobs – rather than functions to be performed and work to be produced. This is the same conversation as took place in the 1980s – job does not = function to be performed, which does not = work output needed.
There are distinctions; we don’t know how to bundle them up into working systems to which we can match people and skills.
These are important (ongoing) discussions. I’m glad you jumped in!
Yahoo did it because it’s an easy way to layoff employees without actually calling it a layoff. It’s basically just forced attrition, chances are ‘most’ of those remote workers aren’t going to move, so they will just quit and look for another job…I think this was the real reason for the “communiqué de presse.”
When will families/women/men be honored for harvesting and sharing their incredible stability…instead of being dismissed and driven into the ground for it? How can the nation’s children be of such little importance?
Yes, we are not far away! It might not have become clear from my response but I think businesses will continue to change their workplace environments to solve a multitude of problems. I just find it ironic the multitudes of people standing up and criticizing both Marissa and Sheryl for taking a strong stand on how to run their businesses. At some point in the not so distant future, it will become clear as to whether those results succeeded or failed, and they will move on or not. But in the future, we can all work to make working environments whatever the heck we want them to be. We can do that by stating clearly what our needs are, negotiating to make sure those needs are met, and then delivering results that far exceed expectations. We — all of us — can be the change we want to see. But criticizing one person for one business decision doesn’t make all that much sense to me.
For the record, at The Good Men Project — where I am CEO — we all work virtually. We do that so we can get the best talent from all over the world. We over-communicate and help each other out constantly. We have people working for us in Boston, NY, Atlanta, Los Angeles, Portland, Toronto, Chicago and Bangkok. We make it work because we believe it gets the best results for everyone.
Thank you for the clarification, Lisa. It will be interesting to see how business models evolve, and those organizations that lead the way.
My research led to this conclusion about Ms. Mayer: The issue is NOT about working from home. Insiders at Yahoo have said this needed doing. The company had become “fat and lazy” with a bloated infrastructure. People were abusing telecommuting and some were just not showing up at all. And a company still has the right to ask its employees to show up for work, right?
Sarah Kessler of Fast Company Magazine: “Mayer’s decisions have been consistently discussed not on the basis of whether they are appropriate for a CEO, but whether they offend her role as a representative for working women everywhere.”
Bonnie Fuller, President & Editor-in-Chief, HollywoodLife.com: “instead of insulting Mayer by saying she’s “superhuman,” and not a “realistic” role model, and criticizing her for paying for a nursery at her own expense, we SHOULD be applauding her. She is one of only 42 female CEOs in the Fortune 1,000 biggest revenue companies. Did you get that — 42 out of 1,000?”
Debbie Madden, Executive Vice President, Cyrus Innovation: I agree with Mayer. Why? Because this debate is not about individual productivity; it is about company productivity. There is little room for argument that in today’s world an employee can be productive from virtually anywhere and at any time, but a company is not merely the sum of its parts. And collaboration is key to fostering innovation.
This story isn’t about telecommuting. It is about a CEO who has been given the mandate to run a company in the best manner possible. If the CEO was a man, would we be talking about this?
Maybe, just maybe, people should be judging Marissa Mayer as CEO. That may turn out to be her biggest success as a woman.
my blog: Marissa Mayer: Has the smoke cleared yet?
I hear what you’re saying, Mr. Belle, and obviously – Marissa Mayer’s job is to run the company. But while other articles mention the abuses you reference, don’t those abuses signal a management problem? Why not deal with the management problem, and the individual cases which, presumably, can be documented with data?
I did read Anne-Marie Slaughter, writing in The Atlantic, cautioning us against judging too quickly, which I understand. Among other things, she mentions the need for collaboration, which I also understand, especially having been in and around tech for as long as I was.
However, there seems to be a “bathrobe” assumption built into visions of the work-from-home employee which strikes me as archaic. There is also an implicit assumption that all time in-office is “productive” or collaborative or somehow adding to a company camaraderie, which is certainly not the case. I have been an on-site employee, a remote employee; an on-site consultant, and a remote consultant. I have managed in-office teams and remote employees as well as contractors. Remote work isn’t for everyone, but I repeat – isn’t there a management problem?
According to the source that reports on the actual HR memo,
The issue is not about 42 female CEOs out of 1000 Fortune 1000 companies. That is women asking to be treated like men in a dysfunctional system. It’s time to replace the oligarchy of owners of mega corporations (male and female), so that instead of struggling against what is essentially a totalitarian country we can have a country that listens to the needs of all people, women and men. I find myself working at two extremes in this regard — calling for a peaceful uprising and at the same time developing peaceful local alternatives. We’re working with http://transitiontownmedia.org/ and http://bealocalist.org/about-us and http://sacred-economics.com/ for examples of possible solutions to the issues you’ve raised here. Working with the current system will never be successful for most people.
I read about Ms. Mayer’s decision and at first thought “how dare she? what about the ecological affects? how will this affect those who need to work from home?” etc.. But then I spoke with friends who work in companies that have allowed part-time commuting; they report that sadly, it doesn’t work well. Person A is full-time in the office, where they can be seen, attend meetings, etc.. Person B works from home one day per week, with the expectation that they’ll be as productive as Person A. Doesn’t happen: for the first month or so, they are but… slowly their productivity slows. They log in at the proper time, but disappear for hours while taking a nap or running an errand or walking the dog or (you get the picture). Then Person A, in the office, prepared to work, is asked to cover for Person B. Not fair on Person A, not good for the company!
Granted that’s not everyone – but from what my friends tell me, it’s far too common and far too big a problem not to be addressed. A new CEO can make the changes needed and perhaps bring about corporate change and increased productivity. While I sympathize with those who will be inconvenienced, until we change our pay structure to include results, or figure out a way to make those at home as productive as those in the office…
Glad to hear from you, Lazygal.
I agree we need to focus on results, and I also agree it’s not a simple situation. But whereas you’ve experienced inefficiencies (inequities?) in work-from-home scenarios, I’ve largely experienced the opposite – which tends to be upheld by a number of studies.
I suspect the extent to which flexibility works well is heavily influenced by the nature of the business/organization, its size, its management, its recruitment, its capacity to assess by results, and so on.
To the extent that flexibility (and accountability for performance) must be fine-tuned in order for Americans to raise families and pay their bills, we have to figure this out. But the issue of business models and management styles cannot be looked at in a vacuum; the “structural” changes must be societal (in my opinion), and are heavily dependent on our collective and individual values. This goes far beyond a single organization or a single CEO, trying to redress profitability problems.
I believe woman can have it all…but probably not all at the same time. As for Yahoo’s recent announcement, I do find the recent change at odds with today’s virtual technology. If unproductiveness is an issue, I would think they would deal with it on a case-by-case basis and weed out unproductive workers in favor of those who value the opportunity to work in that type of environment.
As you know, working from home is not for sissies, and takes much more discipline that working in an office. I wonder if much of the backlash is fueled by the fact that Ms. Mayer added a nursery so she would have access to her child while working. This seems like a slap in the face for those women who wish to have a successful career, yet can’t afford or find good-quality child care. In these cases, telecommuting is a God-send. I also wonder if Ms Mayer would be getting so much criticism if she was a male CEO. Our company is beginning talks about telecommuting and I, for one, can’t wait!!
All good points, Lisa.
This is quite the lively topic. It seems to me Mayer is a CEO and must make decisions accordingly and in a way she can answer to the board and shareholders. Some have suggested there are other reasons for the action (e.g. layoffs or other actions to avoid legal and regulatory rules). Perhaps.
All that said, it seems Ms Mayer is using a blunt instrument to solve other problems and this may effect corporate productivity. IF the real reason for the move is productivity, then management should address those that do not produce. I agree with Lisa that lack of productivity and lack of managers addressing the matters should be addressed case by case. I have been seen as both a tyrant and extremely fair as a manager and a boss in multi-nationals. My modus operandi has always been produce, show me the numbers and give me results. If you did not produce, I was a tyrant, and if you did, I was great and fair. I also indicated I did not care if you worked 10 mins a day or 24/7, I did not care how hard or how little you worked, I did not care what your life was, and “just do it.”
In my 20’s and 30’s I was criticized for hiring women in their early 40s and 50s who had ability, were back in the workforce because of divorce or the kids had left, instead of younger (and often sometimes more attractive) women. When criticized I boldly stated “lets compare bottom lines.” My point is, I was not a feminist (male), I was a capitalist looking for results. Hopefully that is the case of Ms Mayer, and that this instrument is not too blunt and damaging. If it is not effective, the shareholders will have their say.