New Yahoo! CEO is 37 ... and pregnant!

Yes you did.

 

Yep.

 

ijag cleared it up, but as a hypothetical ... I am not so sure she wouldn't be required to disclose this, maybe not legally but ethically. It could be seen as something that would be significant to the company's operations, and she is obviously of utmost importance, not like the average worker bee. In that light it wouldn't be unlike the tension between Apple and Wall Street during Steve Jobs' final five years. There was sometimes quite a bit of anger among major investors who felt they were being kept in the dark.

Don't know the legal requirements, maybe Amy can help us out, but I would think that as she is taking over a public company at such a critical juncture, there would be an obligation to make this known.

 

I'm pretty sure it's illegal to ask about and/or hire someone conditional on impending parenthood. And the Jobs analogy is bizarre, the man had a fatal illness.

I just don't get the issue with this. If a man was about to become a father, who would care? If she does what you hired her to do, why is this an issue at all? Seems like an archaic discussion, especially in the tech industry.

 

Agreed 100 percent.

 

Nah, with Jobs there were several times well before the end that people wanted to know how much time he was missing and why, which seems like an entirely relevant and reasonable piece of information to know about the CEO. Obviously not an issue here because Mayer told the board about this, my guess being that it was under similar rationale. For instance, they have already relocated the annual meeting, which is typically in New York in September, to Yahoo headquarters in California for this very reason. And there is at least the chance that the CEO would be unable to attend for medical reasons. That isn't something that would come up for a man.

It is my understanding that employment rules are quite a bit different for key people.

 

One other thing: The last Yahoo CEO hire blew up in their faces a few months ago because he lied on his resume. They have angry investors. So it was also very good business for Mayer not to surprise those investors.

 

Employment discrimination is hardly my thing, but under Title VII (which applies to employers with at least 15 employees who work 20 weeks a year), discrimination on the basis of pregnancy is considered sex discrimination and therefore covered.

So an employer cannot fail to hire someone because of or condition employment based on solely a woman's pregnancy, but that's a pretty high standard to meet. An employer always has the chance to demonstrate that they did not, for example, hire the pregnant woman because of, say, job safety concerns or some other nondiscriminatory reason.

 

A 37-year-old woman either is or isn't going to have kids within the next few years; it's irrelevant whether she's pregnant when she shows up on Day One. Everyone is wondering, and it is completely illegal for them to ask.

Most women at that level will put their cards on the table; they have the leverage and power to do so. You want me? Here's my plan. If you don't want me under those circumstances, someone else will, and I probably don't want you either. If a woman can't have that conversation, she probably doesn't have the stuff to run a company like Yahoo.

Clearly they wanted her, and moving an annual meeting is a small accommodation for someone you think is important enough to run your company.

 

Agreed on the last part. But, as I noted, she felt that telling them was warranted.

 

Thinking of the jobs I've had in public accounting (being on the partner track) and with Fortune 10 company I think the fact that a pregant woman was hired as a CEO of a well known company sends an important message both to women trying to make it in these worlds and to those doing the hiring.

As others have noted, you can't ask shit like this in an interview. I don't think there is any legal obligation for a woman to disclose this, but as others have said I think that there is an ethical duty as well a practical one in that you want to go into a new job without anyone feeling like they've been blindsided.

Let's be real and put aside political correctness. Whether it's legal to ask these questions or not you can be damn sure questions are asked - if not directly in the interview then later when candidates for a position are being discussed. I recently interviewed candidates for a position that requires a great deal of travel. One of the candidates was a guy whose wife recently had a child. I'm sure I crossed lines in my questions because I was concerned whether I could really get this kid out on the road. I've been part of discussions about whether a woman we really wanted to keep would come back after her maternity leave. You have to be kidding yourself if you think someone isn't wondering whether a newly married woman is going to be out on maternity leave soon when she is being evaluated against other candidates.

The former CEO of my company is known for his attitude that successful women in business have act/be like men. I swear, after listening to him expound on this early in my career with the company, I believed he didn't want women to have any femininity. It's hard to throw womanness (I don't think that's really a word but I don't mean feminine) in everyone's face any more blatantly than with a pregnancy.

Maybe it's a generational thing (remember I'm way old), but this is why I think the story of her pregnancy is important.

 

Mayer plays the attractiveness card in her publicity seeking. Just saying.