She will work right to the very end of her pregnancy.
A 40-year-old woman announces she is pregnant with twins.
It’s a delightful occasion. A happy occasion. One that should be celebrated – the birth of two new beautiful babies.
So why are so many women around the world shaking their heads at this particular announcement?
Well, its not just any old 40-year-old woman.
It’s an extraordinarily rich and powerful woman, the CEO of one of the Internet giants. And it’s a woman whose working life, many mothers fear, sets the bar too high and the expectations too insurmountable for other working mums.
The chief executive of Yahoo Marissa Mayer made the announcement overnight via her blog that she’s pregnant with twin girls and due in December.
“With great happiness, Zack and I have some exciting news to share – I’m pregnant! In fact, I’m expecting identical twin girls, likely arriving in December,” she wrote.
“The twins part was quite a surprise, because I have no family history of twins or any other predisposing factors. However, as I’ve now learned, identical twins occur by random chance in roughly 1 out of approximately every 300 pregnancies.”
But it was this part that rattled the keyboards of many: “I plan to approach the pregnancy and delivery as I did with my son three years ago, taking limited time away and working throughout.”
It’s not the first time she has done this.
When she gave birth to her son in 2012, a Yahoo spokesperson announced that Mayer would be working remotely for a week and will return to the office “as soon as possible, likely in 1-2 weeks.”
At the time she was slammed.
“Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer Is Making a Huge Mistake by Cutting Her Maternity Leave Short,” Allison Benedikt wrote for Slate. “Mayer didn’t just have foot surgery. She birthed a tiny human being. A baby who needs stuff.”
She went on: “Also, while I am a dedicated co-parenter who knows that fathers are just as valuable and competent and necessary and everything else to childrearing as mothers, I’m also not afraid—not afraid!—to say that, in the early days, moms and the babies that just came out of them after cooking inside of them are both getting and giving something remarkable out of that bond.”
“You are not just a CEO anymore. You are not only responsible for a huge corporation and thousands of employees. Life changes, priorities shift. You are a parent.
There were fears Mayer was setting the bar too high. That all women would now be expected to be superwomen.
The Wall Street Journal wrote at the time: “As a woman and a professional, Mayer just ratcheted up the stakes—not just for Yahoo, its customers and its investors, but for working moms everywhere, not to mention our children.”
And just as she planned, Mayer was superwoman (or at least, her version thereof): she was back in the office two weeks after giving birth.
Many say feminism is about choices, that her maternity leave has no implication for anyone else.
Mayer wrote at the time she accepted the job at Yahoo when 28 weeks pregnant.
“If I took the opportunity, it was clear that I would have to find a way to have time with my baby without a long maternity leave,” she said. “I also knew going forward that there wouldn’t be much time beyond my job and my family for anything else. Ultimately, I decided I was fine with that, because my family and my job are what really matter to me.”
Reading that, it sounds like Mayer felt she had no choice.
Is it that the male-dominated corporate world doesn’t truly cater to mothers with babies in new high profile gigs?
Many were surprised at such an announcement coming from a new mother, with some critics saying she was creating a gender divide. Others said it was okay for her as she could afford to build a nursery off her office at work should she wish while other parents did not have the luxury.
In April, that same year she won some critics back when she changed the maternity leave policy, increasing the amount of paid leave offered to new parents in 2013. The policy change allowed new mothers to take up to 16 weeks of paid time off and fathers eight.
But it’s Mayer’s new announcement that has some worried the expectations of women is once again being raised.
In the US, the only developed country that doesn’t guarantee paid maternity or parental leave to workers, it isn’t unusual for women to be forced to go back to work after two, three or four weeks maternity leave.
But these women aren’t Marissa Mayer. They are workers on the factory floor. They are workers in the diners, in the service industry and family businesses.
The average maternity leave in the U.S. is about 10 weeks, but 16 percent of new mothers take only one to four weeks away from work and 33 percent took no formal time off at all, returning to job duty almost immediately.
These women didn’t do it to be superwomen. They didn’t do it to please shareholders or a board.
They didn’t do it with the comfort of knowing there were round-the-clock nannies caring for their newborn babies.
They did it so their families could eat.
Related content:
The movies you have to watch while you’re on maternity leave.
Marissa Meyer didn’t want to pose pregnant. Give her a break.
Top Comments
While women have fought hard for the right to return to work etc, it's also important to acknowledge the power of a mum as caregiver. Mums give unique nurture to infants, the sort of care that no one else can give, as (generally) they carry the kid and birth them. There is a biological connection there that shouldn't be pushed aside in the discussion. Of course anyone can care for a baby, but I think we do ourselves a disservice to assume that going back to work as soon as possible is some great achievement of feminism. Motherhood is one of the more powerful things about being a woman.
So you want more female CEOs, just so long as they get to do less than their male counterparts in similar positions. That's equality for you right there.