雅虎女CEO受到性別歧視了嗎

In 1985, when I became a journalist, I was invited to join a group of female colleagues who met regularly to discuss how rotten it was being a woman at work. I turned up once but never again: I was irritated by the complaining and couldn’t help noticing the people who were doing the most of it were the least good at their jobs. If you’re not great at what you do, I thought, you shouldn’t blame it on your sex.

在1985年，我成了一名記者，我應邀加入了一個女同事小組，她們定期聚在一起吐槽當一名職業女性有多倒黴。我露了一次面就再也不去了：我被那些牢騷搞得很不爽並不禁發現，抱怨得最起勁的，正是那些最不稱職的人。如果你無法勝任自己的工作，我覺得，你不該將其歸咎於自己的性別。

In 30 years I have progressed a bit in my views. Whether people are good at their jobs and whether they are suffering from gender bias are different questions. Where there is sexism, making a fuss — though boring for both the person doing the complaining and for the person listening — is important. If nothing is said, nothing changes.

30年來，我的觀點有了一些進步。人們是否擅長他們的工作，和他們是否受到性別歧視是兩碼事。如果存在性別歧視，說出來很重要——雖然說的人覺得抱怨得沒意思，聽的人也覺得厭煩。如果無人發聲，就不會有改觀。

Financial Times readers, it seems, have not progressed so much. Marissa Mayer last week complained to the FT that the media had it in for her because she was a woman — and FT readers responded as I did all those years ago. One wrote: “You are incompetent — it’s as simple as that, Mayer. Stop trying to hide behind ‘gender’ victimisation nonsense, please.”

英國《金融時報》（簡稱FT）讀者們的思想看起來還沒有進步到這個階段。瑪麗薩•邁耶(Marissa Mayer)不久前向FT抱怨稱，媒體故意跟她過不去，就因爲她是個女人——而FT讀者們的反應與我多年前的看法如出一轍。一位讀者寫道：“是你無能——就那麼簡單，邁耶。別再拿‘性別歧視’受害者那套無稽之談作擋箭牌了，拜託。”

A couple of hundred posted similar comments. She had done a rubbish job as CEO of Yahoo, sexism had nothing to do with it.

有幾百人發表了類似的評論。作爲雅虎(Yahoo)的CEO，她幹得差勁極了，這絲毫無關性別歧視。

Their vehemence makes me smell a rat. Ms Mayer may have done a poor job. But are they right that there has been no sexism in the reporting? And how does one measure it?

他們的激烈反應讓我覺得有些不對勁。邁耶或許幹得差勁。但報道中當真不存在性別歧視嗎？而這又該如何衡量呢？

Ms Mayer complained at how the media is obsessed with women’s clothes, citing Hillary Clinton and her pantsuits. This is true, but the attire gender gap is closing — last week the FT ran an entire article on Boris Johnson’s backpack. Either way, I’m not sure it’s such a big deal. I’m interested in what women (and men) wear, and so long as pantsuits are not an alternative to policies, I see little harm in it.

邁耶抱怨媒體是如何津津樂道於女性的着裝，以希拉里•克林頓(Hillary Clinton)和她的長褲套裝爲例。這倒沒錯，不過穿戴問題上的性別差異正在縮小——不久前FT就刊登了一篇文章，通篇大談鮑里斯•約翰遜(Boris Johnson)的揹包。不管怎樣，我沒覺得這有什麼大不了。我就對女人們（和男人們）穿什麼很感興趣，而且只要不是隻談褲裝而不談政策，我看不出這有什麼危害。

In any case, Ms Mayer can’t really protest at press intrusion into her wardrobe, given the photo of her in Vogue a couple of years ago lying upside down on an uncomfortable bit of garden furniture in skin-tight blue sheath and bondage sandals, holding an iPad reflecting an image of herself.

再說，邁耶不會真的抗議出版物報道她的衣着，看看幾年前《Vogue》雜誌上她的照片：身着藍色緊身連衣裙和繫帶鞋的她，倒着躺在一張不太舒適的戶外傢俱上，手中的iPad屏幕上顯示的是她本人的形象。

If I were CEO I wouldn’t have posed like that in a million years, but then that’s because upside down and thus clad I would not have looked a pretty sight. Ms Mayer, on the other hand, looked a very pretty sight, and did the world a favour by proving you can be gorgeous, blonde, love clothes and run a big company in male-dominated IT.

如果我是CEO，我就永遠不會擺出那個姿勢，但那是因爲我要是穿成這樣頭朝下躺着會很難看。然而，邁耶在那張照片上卻相當驚豔，順便向世人證明，你可以光彩照人、是個金髮靚女，熱愛穿衣打扮，同時在男性主導的IT業掌管一家大公司。

Equally, people have cried sexism at the endless articles about her as a mother. From the time she was appointed when pregnant, we have watched her through two pregnancies, tutted at the scant maternity leave, marvelled at the on-site nursery and nannies and ogled endless photos of the cute baby girls in the office.

同樣，人們高呼鋪天蓋地的關於她母親身份的文章存在性別歧視。自從她孕期獲得雅虎任命以來，我們已經目睹了她的兩度孕期，爲她短促的產假議論紛紛，爲她辦公室裏安置的嬰兒房和保姆們驚歎不已，也被她辦公室裏那對可愛的女寶寶的海量照片萌到。

By contrast no one writes about the children of Yahoo founders David Filo and Jerry Yang — their Wikipedia pages don’t even reveal that they have any. This looks like gender bias, but again it is understandable. We don’t have many female CEOs with babies, and so I’m grateful to Ms Mayer for showing me how she does it.

相形之下，雅虎創始人戴維•費羅(David Filo)及楊致遠(Jerry Yang)的孩子們卻無人問津——他們的維基百科頁面甚至連他們有沒有孩子都沒說。這看起來倒像性別歧視，但又可以理解。有寶寶的女性CEO並不多見，所以我很感激邁耶讓我看到她是怎麼做的。

The only bad things are the opinions expressed over whether she is a good mother. Such judgment is no longer for women only — Mark Zuckerberg has posted almost as many pictures of his offspring online as has Ms Mayer — only he is judged a wonderful father on the basis of having taken his baby for a jab, while she is a bad mother because she works too hard.

唯一不好的是那些關於她是不是個好媽媽的評論。這種評價不再只針對女性——馬克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)在網上曬娃的次數與邁耶不相上下。只不過，人們僅憑扎克伯格帶寶寶打了一次疫苗就認定他是個稱職的爸爸，卻認定邁耶是個不稱職的媽媽，因爲她工作太努力。

There is an even more important bias — sheer volume of stories. Last year 4,200 articles were printed in English about her, more than four times as many than were about her opposite number at AOL, Tim Armstrong (also bought by Verizon last year) — which is particularly remarkable given how hard he tried to be newsworthy via a string of gaffes.

還有一項更重要的歧視——報道的絕對數量。去年有關邁耶的英文報道有4200篇，幾乎四倍於美國在線（AOL，去年也被Verizon收購）的男性CEO蒂姆•阿姆斯特朗(Tim Armstrong)。考慮到阿姆斯特朗多麼努力地試圖通過一連串的失言讓自己上新聞，這一懸殊格外醒目。

We are simply more interested in women CEOs and we will go on being more interested until there are more of them. This is not an advantage — the pressure is bad enough anyway without everyone reporting on your every move. It would be enough to make one do a Ms Mayer, spend $500,000 of company money on private security guards — and generate yet another adverse story.

我們就是對女性CEO更感興趣，而且我們還將繼續保持這種興趣，直到女CEO越來越多。這並不是一個優勢——壓力原本就夠大的了，更何況每個人都在盯着你的一舉一動。這足以讓人像邁耶那樣，花掉公司50萬美元用於私人安保——又製造出一條負面新聞。