Marissa Mayer, the new CEO of Yahoo
First Anne-Marie Slaughter’s admission in The Atlantic that she knows she can’t have it all, and now Marissa Mayer’s announcement that she’ll only take a few week’s maternity leave from her new CEO position at Yahoo. I’m thinking that Mayer should get together with Slaughter for a talk. But it’s more likely that Mayer is looking to Sheryl Sandberg as her mentor.
Why am I writing about this on JobTalk? Well, here’s the deal. Because of Slaughter’s article and now Mayer’s announcement (and don’t forget Sheryl Sandberg’s advice for women), there’s a flurry of discussion about women holding high-level positions and whether or not they can be the moms they want to be. Many people are touting Sandberg and Mayer as role models, but I’d recommend that you don’t look to them for a working-mother model. They simply aren’t the average woman.