Pregnancy no barrier to corporate success:

Marissa Mayer, the newly appointed CEO of Yahoo! has revealed she’s pregnant with a baby boy.
By Kate McQuestin
Date: July 18 2012
Tags: work, maternity leave, maternity, baby, marissa mayer,
marissa-mayer

The former Google VP told Fortune that Yahoo! executives knew about her pregnancy last month and "showed their evolved thinking" in hiring her anyway.

The 37-year-old is due in October and has said she plans to take just "a few weeks" of working maternity leave.

TechCrunch says Mayer may be the first ever pregnant CEO of a Fortune 500 tech company and calls the announcement "trailblazing."

Most online chatter about Mayer has been full of praise with some saying "You CAN have it all!" However, there have been those who said Mayer is perhaps not the best example to prove such a thesis.

One of them was Anne-Marie Slaughter, whose online lament last month on the The Atlantic's website - "Why Women Still Can't Have it All" said Mayer’s situation – with her wealth, prominence and power has little concrete relevance to the lives of ordinary women.

"She's superhuman, rich, and in charge. She isn't really a realistic role model for hundreds of thousands of women who are trying to figure out how you make it to the top AND have a family at the same time," Slaughter said.

Mayer’s personal wealth has been estimated in the hundreds of millions.

What do you think? Do you agree with Slaughter's comments that Mayer is not a realistic role model?

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1 Total Comments
Ros says: 2012 07 18

I agree with Slaughter. How can Mayer possibly understand the experience of ordinary working women, maternity leave, child care issues, juggling home and work? She’s had a great career and good luck to her, well done; but she’s in a position to have someone help with all the things that other women have to do and juggle for themselves. Unfortunately, a one-off case like this doesn’t do much to advance issues in the workplace for most women and we continue to lose good talent (or good talent shifts jobs) because of the issues people like Mayer don’t know about.
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