Marissa Mayer and Leadership in the Media.

When Gene Morphis was let go as Chief Financial Officer of fashion retailer Fancesca’s Holdings Corp., the reason was clear. He talked, texted and tweeted too much.

In 2011 Clothing Designer Marc Jacobs fired COO Patrice Lataillade for not doing his job, the press floated stories he was dumped because he disapproved of the CEO’s misconduct. The Company shot back and cleared the air. Lataillade was cooking the books.

There were no articles about "how difficult" the male CEO’s were.

But when CEO Marissa Mayer abruptly made Chief Operating Officer Henrique de Castro an Ex-Yahoo employee this week because of flat ad sales, there were more stories about how difficult she is to work with, and how she and de Castro were at odds with each other, and  about employee grumblings than there were about sales numbers.

Is this fair?

The media scrutinizes every move she makes.
How can a young attractive female CEO lead with continual stories that overtly or covertly paint gleeful pictures that the CEO is viewed as a “B” word every time she makes a business decision? 

Mayer has made great strides in transforming Yahoo into a mobile centric content company instead of the tired search engine it was.  
But almost every news story about Mayer is critical of her personally or triggers personal criticism.

Silicon Valley is full of high profile business leaders, but do Bezos, Ellison, Gates or Brin have to face the same personal scrutiny as Mayer?

It is not news that Mayer is a high profile CEO of a high Profile company. She is young and attractive and it is clear that Mayer uses her looks as much as her brains to create advantage for herself and her company. Stories about Mayer have graced the pages of business magazines as well as Vogue.

When she eliminated the Yahoo! remote work policy, the media cried “How can a working mother CEO make a decision that is counter intuitive to Yahoo’s other working mothers.” Few focused on the lack of productivity at Yahoo! Mayer was focused on fixing.

I think there is a clear double standard perniciously at work here. This happens with high power women in business and politics.  Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Carly Fiorina have also have always faced additional unfair criticism that their male counterparts don’t face. Until the media stops insinuating that women leaders can be a “B” it will be hard for women business leaders to be viewed as leaders.  Until that happens, there is no equality.

Christopher Bannon
Note: The views expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of True Blue Inclusion or it's clients.