Yahoo’s New Ice Queen Leader

The 21st century has been a great time for the advancement of women in society. We now

have more women in senior corporate positions than ever before. We have seen Hillary Clinton

serve as the United States Secretary of State and we now look upon Christine Lagarde, serving as

the head of the International Monetary Fund. Despite the many leadership roles women now

hold, the media still cannot accept the thought of professionally successful females and continues

to control their femininity. Recently, this can be seen by the media’s portrayal of Yahoo! CEO,

Marissa Mayer, as an insensible ice queen.

Mayer’s tech career began back in

1999, when she joined Google as the first

female engineer and the 20th overall

employee. Over her years at Google, she

worked her way up in the ranks and played

crucial roles in the development of Google’s

core operations. Prior to her resignation from

Google and appointment to CEO of Yahoo!, Mayer served as vice president for several products.

During this time period, Mayer received much attention and critique from the media.

A good portion of the media’s coverage casts a negative light on Mayer’s reputation at

Google. She has been called, “Google’s icy, hypercompetitive search chief,” and, “the blonde

cyborg who runs Google’s search engine.” Even more notably, a Business Insider article

ridicules her professional capabilities, saying she, “will work harder than anyone and is smarter

than 99 percent of the people…[but] doesn’t understand managing any other way than

intimidation or humiliation.”

Before explaining how this commentary

portrays Mayer as an ice queen, it is important to

fully understand the term. An ice queen is

merciless, disconnected, and aggressive. It’s the

type of woman that has no consideration for

others’ personal needs, putting their job ahead of all else. While the above quotes do not directly

accuse Mayer of these traits, they are most definitely implied. When calling Mayer a cyborg, the

author depicts Mayer to be a robotic workaholic that is distanced from other humans and

coworkers. She is viewed to be an unnatural freak. Furthermore, claiming she knows no other

way to manage than via intimidation and humiliation shows Mayer’s apparent aggression and

ruthlessness.

All of the negative media commentary mentioned thus far

is from at least 17 months ago, when she still worked at Google.

One would think that Yahoo!’s appointment of her to CEO would

confirm her professional abilities and silence her critiques.

However, just the opposite is true, especially after her controversial

decision to eliminate Yahoo!’s work-from-home policy. This move affected hundreds of

employees and sparked outrage on the internet.

Take this boston.com article for example. Just at first glance, the title (“Marissa Mayer Is

Snobbish, One-Dimensional, and Out of Touch”) makes the author’s disgust of Mayer evident.

The article argues that Mayer is being unfair to her employees because, while she may have the

resources and abilities to not work from home, most employees cannot make this happen. This

lack of accommodation for the workers leads the article to call Mayer, “out of touch,” and, “a

one-dimensional anti-role model.” Moreover, her decision to require in-office work is called “her

draconian, snobbish decree, [that has] robbed women and men of their freedom.” Although

Mayer has taken on greater responsibility and changed careers, the media continues to depict her

as a cruel ice queen.

The ultimate confirmation of Mayer’s

perceived ice queen personality is found in a

gokicker.com online quiz game. The quiz is

composed of ten quotes, and the person playing

the game guesses whether the quote is from Marissa Mayer or Miranda Priestly. Priestly, the

editor-in-chief of Runway magazine in The Devil Wears Prada, is known as one of the most

famous fictional ice queens. By making this quiz, there is a comparison drawn between Mayer

and Priestly, and Mayer is characterized as an ice queen.

All this critique of Mayer seems rather harsh and makes one wonder if it is truly

deserved. Is Mayer actually the bad leader and impersonal ice queen that media makes her seem

to be? Well, of course not.

When it was asked in an online poll if Mayer is truly as rude as the media depicts her, a

coworker at Google took to Mayer’s defense. Although he chose to remain anonymous, many

other (named) Google employees supported his post, adding to its credibility. He argues that

Mayer can come off as a rude person only because she is extremely busy and must be direct

about everything to reduce wasted time. The blunt nature of her speech may appear to be ill-

intentioned, but it most certainly is not. Going on, he says, “to make it seem as though she was

universally hated or incompetent is a gross mischaracterization.” Moreover, he calls her

“generous, thoughtful, and caring.” The experiences mentioned in this article are factual, not

preposterous claims made by third party sources. After reading the input of a close coworker, it

certainly does not seem that Mayer is the cruel animal the media makes her out to be.

Yet, if the stories of an anonymous

coworker are not sufficiently convincing, a Fortune

Magazine interview with Mayer reveals her true

self. When asked how she handles all of her

responsibilities, Mayer responds with a spin-off of

a famous Vince Lombardi quote. She says, “I

ruthlessly

prioritize … for me, it’s God, family, and Yahoo! – in that

order.” Yes, Mayer does work a lot, as she is famous for 120

hour work weeks with naps underneath her desk. However,

unlike an ice queen, work is not her first priority. She puts her

family before anything work related. In fact, near the beginning of Mayer’s time at Yahoo!, she

took a 2 week maternity leave for the birth of her son. While 2 weeks is an awfully short

maternity leave for the average person, it is a very long leave for the CEO of a multibillion dollar

publicly traded company. Her willingness to leave work for this long shows her commitment to

family. This evidence of Mayer’s personal side is proof to the fact that Mayer is not an ice queen.

Due to ice queens’ lack of personal skills and distasteful personalities, they often fail at

their leadership roles. As further proof of Mayer not being an ice queen, she has proven herself

to be a phenomenal leader since rising to the CEO position. The clearest indicator of Mayer’s

success is the performance of Yahoo!’s stock over the past year. Because Yahoo! is a publicly

traded company, the CEO’s main job is to produce profits and a rising share price for the

stockholders. Over the past year, Yahoo!’s stock is up over 100%, compared to the Dow’s 22%

return, Yahoo! has performed extraordinarily over the past year. When Mayer came into office,

Yahoo! was in need of a big change to turn around its declining image and popularity. She has

been the managerial spark Yahoo! needed and her leadership abilities must be accredited for the

company’s recent success.

Clearly Mayer is not the cruel ice queen so many people make her out to be. Her work is

worthy of praise, not unjustified criticism. But, why does the media continue to characterize

Mayer as a heartless ice queen? Well, the media simply cannot fathom female professional

successes. For years, the professional world has been dominated by males. Most every CEO was

a man, most every new company was founded by men, and most every business success was

credited to men. Yet, this is no longer the case. Female CEOs like Mayer are disrupting the

marketplace and leading the entire business world. Despite the change in female’s professional

roles, the news and media has not adapted to the new professional environment.

The male dominated media industry is accustomed to crediting males with major

successes. While the statistics are improving, women only hold 40% of jobs in newspaper

newsrooms and 21% of jobs as Sunday morning talk show commentators. The men in charge of

writing and reporting the news are so familiarized with putting men in the spotlight, they cannot

accept the unfamiliar idea of women’s success. As a result, female accomplishments are

misreported and not rightfully credited. This is evident by the media’s treatment of Marissa

Mayer. It is uncustomary for the media to praise her turnaround efforts and the successful

leadership of Mayer.

Over the years, there have been many

extraordinarily successful business turnarounds

that have received media accolade. A prime

example is the 1999 Inc. article, “What You Can

Learn from Steve Jobs.” This piece was written

on one of the best turnarounds in business history

– Steve Jobs’ resuscitation of Apple. The article examines the many leadership traits of Jobs,

ultimately giving him critical acclaim. The only difference between this scenario and Mayer’s

Yahoo! turnaround is the CEO’s gender. Before each company adopted their new CEOs, they

were both ugly tech companies that have outlived their glory days of spotlight and glamour. Each

company’s respective CEO then used their superb leadership abilities to revitalizes the

company’s mojo. Yet, because Mayer is a female she was not fortunate enough to get the praise

she deserves.

Even worse than Mayer’s nonexistent praise is the media criticism she underwent. As

made apparent by the aforementioned articles, Mayer has been depicted as an evil, impersonal,

incompetent ice queen. The media is uncomfortable crediting Mayer’s success in a

stereotypically male career path. Instead, they take control of her femininity. The media is unable

to concede to the truth, making it seem Mayer is failing at her job and females are incapable of

holding positions of great authority.

When Mayer posed for Vogue after taking the reins at Yahoo!, the media lashed on and

attacked her femininity. An important fact to note is that the Vogue article was more than just a

photo shoot. It contains seven pages of interview material with Marissa Mayer. This is where the

gender differences in media become clearly

apparent. Had some male CEO done a photo

shoot for a style magazine like GQ or

Esquire, the media would pay very little

attention to the poses he takes on or what he

was wearing. If the media were to comment

on an article of this sort, they would speak more to the written content from the CEO’s interview.

However, for Mayer, the media relentlessly critiques and ridicules her barely scandalous poses.

This is because media is stuck to the stereotypical ideals and traits of women from many years

ago. In the Vogue article, Mayer is examined for her physical substance, not her intellectual

ideas. By doing so, the media depicts Mayer as less than she is truly worth. Mayer appears to be

just another attractive women posing for a big magazine photo shoot, rather than the brilliant

business leader she is. Her feminism is controlled by the media to avoid accrediting a female

with success in a historically and stereotypically male dominated position.

Anna Holmes, founder of Jezebel, an online feminist blog site, argues that the media is

determined to criticize women of authority. She says:

But amid the discussion of whether or not the famously fashion-fond Marissa

Mayer was setting a good example for women in the C-suite — most

correspondents on my listserv responded with a resounding yes — there was a

nod to the inherent tensions within contemporary femaleness, an

acknowledgement that women who take an active interest in fashion and beauty

are to both be commended (personal grooming is indicative of self-respect) and

humored (personal grooming is superficial).

According to Holmes, women face a catch-22 when it comes to their appearance, and the media

is prepared to exploit this to control a women’s femininity. Mayer’s photo shoot was an attempt

to make herself appear more personal to the public. The media decided to spoil her efforts and

make Mayer appear to be merely superficial. They want Mayer to be the stereotypical woman

from the days of gender inequality.

Over the past couple of months, Mayer has been very internally focused and has escaped

the media spotlight. As her company’s stock continues to outperform the market and Yahoo!

becomes more competitive among its peers, Mayer has yet to receive the positive media

recognition she deserves. Marissa Mayer has proven herself to be a spectacular CEO but, in

disbelief, the media has pinned her as an incapable ice queen, discrediting her abilities and

accomplishments. The days of gender inequality in the work place are disappearing and it is time

for the media to move on to. Credit must be given where credit is due, regardless of one’s

gender.

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