Since this issue felt so personal to me, I've chosen to write in the form of a letter to Marissa Mayer.
Dear Marissa:
Whether you pay attention to it or not, being only 1
of 21 woman CEOs of a Fortune 500 company puts you in a position of great responsibility
in more ways than one—you hold the authority to shape people’s perceptions of
women in leadership. Sadly, your choice to strike an alluring pose in the
September 2013 Vogue has the effect of adding to the distorted perspective many
already have of women in leadership.
I’m not naive. I understand that public relations is about
drawing attention to the company and selling an image. I can guess why you’d
want to present an image of yourself and Yahoo! as edgy,
non-traditional, and unconventional.
The problem is that this sexualized image of you does not help pave the way for other women in leadership. It shoves giant boulders on their paths—one that is already strewn with many other obstacles.
While I choose to assume that your knowledge of technology
and your business savvy are what landed you your spot at Yahoo!, many others will
not be so generous. These comments in response to a Business Insider piece about your Vogue pose are just one example of the pervasive attitudes about
women in leadership:
- TOTALLY INAPPROPRIATE MAYER on Sep 11, 6:02 PM said: MAYER IS SCREWING YAHOO UP SPEND THAT ALIBABA MONEY MAYER
- amt on Sep 12, 8:14 AM said: Obviously she's too wrapped up in herself and her ego to put that aside and focus on running a company. Terrible idea to make her a CEO.
- Sportsguy on Sep 12, 8:55 AM said: Maybe she should concentrate on fixing the Yahoo Sports site which is now an unusable mess.
- Laser Guided Loogie on Sep 13, 5:40 AM said: Marissa Mayer is a good looking lady. I don't see why some people think that is at odds with the fact that she also smart and competent. So go ahead and pose Marissa. If you can give Google some competition in the search market again, maybe you can even put out a bikini calendar. Give them out with your stock offerings and I'll buy both. -Ken
Here are just a few of the obstacles girls and women
who aspire to leadership face today.
Young girls and women face an even more hypersexualized
image of themselves in media than ever before (and young men face a
hypermasculinized image of themselves). If you doubt these facts, view these
documentaries, each of which is full of data from scholars who study these issues:
Jean Kilbourne’s Killing Us Softly 4 (2010),
Jackson Katz’s Tough Guise (1999),
and Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s MissRepresentation (2011). (The last is available to stream on Netflix as of the date of this post—September 17, 2013).
If you think the images of women in media are too trivial to
worry about, consider this estimate that American teenagers spend 10 hours and
45 minutes a day consuming media images and messages. That’s a lot of time to absorb
ideas, especially when they are far more focused on women as the sexual object
of men’s desires than they were even just 20 years ago.
If you think that doesn’t influence adult’s perceptions of
women in leadership, consider the woefully poor representation of women in
leadership in the U.S. In education, women are only 14% of college presidents
at doctoral-granting institutions, and 29% at two-year colleges. In politics,
women are only 20% of the U.S. Senate and 18.3% of the U.S. Congress. In
business, women are only 4% of the CEOs of Fortune 500 companies.
I’m sure you’re aware of the low numbers of women in
technology at all levels. If you think these images don’t contribute to that
problem, I point you to the 50 years of data from the Draw-a-Scientist-Test
(DAST) showing the remarkable persistence of stereotypes about who belongs in
science and technology. Researchers have now tested many populations including
elementary students, college students, and teachers of math and science in the
U.S. and internationally with woefully consistent results. DAST participants
have repeatedly imaged “a scientist as a middle-aged or older man wearing
glasses and a white coat and working alone in a lab.” Unless they’ve been shownotherwise, most just can’t even imagine a women scientist or technologist. For
more, see my essay Nerds, Geeks and Barbies: A Social Systems Perspective onthe Impact of Stereotypes in Computer Science Education.
There’s nothing wrong with you celebrating being an
attractive woman. What I find problematic is that you flaunted that attractiveness
to market your company.
Can you picture Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, or Larry Page wearing tight pants and uncomfortable shoes, striking an uncomfortable and submissive pose upside down on a chaise, while holding an image of their pouty lips on an I-pad? Neither can I.
 |
| Apple CEO Tim Cook on a chaise |
Can you picture Mark Zuckerberg, Tim Cook, or Larry Page wearing tight pants and uncomfortable shoes, striking an uncomfortable and submissive pose upside down on a chaise, while holding an image of their pouty lips on an I-pad? Neither can I.
They would never pose that way because they don’t have to.
Like most men, they’ve learned that their worth is primarily measured by their
achievements. Most women still learn that their worth is primarily measured by
their physical appearance.
The problem is that most U.S. American women are not model-thin
and stunningly beautiful. That doesn’t stop many women from wasting their time
and their financial resources trying to meet an unachievable standard in an
effort to feel “worthy.” I point to the massive earnings of the fashion and
beauty industries (supported by Vogue),
and the exponential growth in cosmetic surgery in the U.S.
Meanwhile, we still live in a country where 1 in 4 women will
be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes. And, many will still be erroneously
accused of “asking for it” because they were busy trying to meet this oppressive standard
of female beauty by dressing in alluring ways.
Forty percent of those rapes will be perpetrated by men who
knew the woman they raped. There is a connection between these hypersexualized
images of women (focused on being the submissive object of men’s desires) and
hypermasculinized images of men (focused on being the active subject who holds power
over others), and the fact that too many men still think it is
acceptable to commit this type of violence against women.
How did I get from an “innocent” photo on a chaise to
rape? It wasn't hard because yours isn’t the only hypersexualized image of a woman
in mass media. They are everywhere and they have power.
If a young girl has a family that teaches her to value herself in different ways, these images may have little impact on her. But, if she does not, these constant messages about the “real” measure of a woman’s worth can be crippling. If a young boy has a family that teaches him to have compassion towards others, then he’s less likely to turn women into objects. But, if he does not, the constant messages about women as objects of men’s desires, and men as the actors upon those objects, can be consuming.
If a young girl has a family that teaches her to value herself in different ways, these images may have little impact on her. But, if she does not, these constant messages about the “real” measure of a woman’s worth can be crippling. If a young boy has a family that teaches him to have compassion towards others, then he’s less likely to turn women into objects. But, if he does not, the constant messages about women as objects of men’s desires, and men as the actors upon those objects, can be consuming.
Your actions demonstrate why it’s not enough to just have women in leadership. We need women in leadership who understand the ways in which gender socialization still negatively influences women’s and men’s perceptions of themselves and others. We need women who are aware of the ways in which their actions powerfully influence the future for other women—by creating possibilities or making things less possible.
Your photo is like a giant boulder for the next woman to climb over on her path to leadership. It represents the ways in which you just made it harder for her to be taken seriously as a leader—and to take herself seriously—especially if she is not as physically attractive as you are.
