I'm A Woman Hear Me Roar!

For those of you who follow me on Twitter, you may have noticed that I have made a few comments regarding Marissa Mayer. If you don’t know who Marissa Mayer is, she is the new CEO of Yahoo. She left Google to come to Yahoo and she is the youngest Fortunue 500 company CEO at just 37. Since being appointed, Marissa has made some questionable comments regarding feminism to the press.

I have read many articles voicing opinions about Marissa’s comments and though I thought I had moved on and left the topic in the dust, I can’t seem to stop my fascination with reading more about her.

Here’s the thing, I consider myself a feminist, I always have and always will. For those of you who know me, you know how I am pretty outspoken about female equality and rights. My first research paper was on Gloria Steinem and ever since I am just addicted to reading about strong women.

My ideas of feminism though, aren’t topical and aren’t complex. Women have a different chemical and hormonal make-up than men. I highly recommend anyone who is a woman or man to read “The Female Brain” by Louann Brizendine for a ridiculously interesting book about the reasons women act, think and feel the way they do. It gave me huge insight into the actual scientific and medical differences between a man and a woman.
Based on the book, women have different interests and feelings about topics than men. One of the key points in this book is that women feel more validated by a social job at a certain age. I don’t mean what I am saying in a limiting way at all, I know everyone is different but this really resonated with me. I used to love math and be satisfied in an analytics position but as I have grown up I haven’t felt as validated at a desk job with little to no interaction. This confused me and left me frustrated with my current position. Reading more about how my mind and body worked left me feeling a lot more understood and normal. Women's horomonal makeup have them feel gratified by working in a social setting and communicating with people around them.

In terms of feminism as a whole, it’s human nature to find things that you relate to with other humans. I think that being a female is something that should be celebrated. As social creatures, women like to share the challenges and joys of being a woman in these modern times. I don’t need to tell people that I’m a woman and have a full-time job and support myself in NYC to make a statement about how great and capable I am. Instead, I think it’s more about looking at the history and acknowledging that we weren’t allowed to do this before and now we are. Not that we weren’t capable, not that we weren’t smart enough, simply because society didn’t allow for it. The fact that we had some powerful revolutionists that shaped our society for today is something that should be celebrated!

I don’t know if reading about Marissa and her decisions is something I’m captivated by because she is a female leader getting a lot of press or if it is like a train wreck and I just can’t look away from. When Marissa declared that she doesn’t consider herself a feminist there was an uproar from women everywhere. Comments included how Marissa should acknowledge that if it weren’t for feminists she wouldn’t be able to hold the title she holds today. Marissa said that she believes she is just as capable as a man. Duh- Marissa! Us feminists don’t think we aren’t capable but want equal rights anyway. It’s not about saying we can now do the things men do- we always had the ability to, we just didn’t have the power.

I think what makes me most sad is that we lack very public women role models. Marissa shouldn’t look at her job as just that to run Yahoo but more as a symbol of the American Dream. When I was growing up I didn’t have a strong female business leader to look up to. I looked up to my female teachers and family. There is a dual role to that of a modern age feminist, besides continuing to prove our intelligence and capabilities, it is our job to educate the younger generation about our history and what they are capable of achieving.  Not everyone has grown up with the same privileges and opportunities so it is important to raise awareness to young girls that their career opportunities are limitless.

Marissa Mayer should take a step back from the enthralling business black hole.  She needs to look around and notice that she has the opportunity to change a lot more lives than just those of the people who use Yahoo.  Hey, who knows, she might even get a little more job gratification that way.