Why Marissa Mayer is too hot to be Yahoo’s CEO: The case against hiring women.
By: Alex Kane
Tags: Women, Feminism, Diversity

Marissa Mayer, Yahoo! president and CEO, on the August 2013 cover of Vogue.

“We could never hire her because she was too hot. Even if she was qualified, we would never hire her. Men would’ve fought over who got to sleep with her. It would be too distracting. And it might even be dangerous for her. She would’ve been harassed. And I can’t fire my entire workforce for harassing her, because then who would do the work?”

Last night I spoke with a man who believes denying qualified women roles at his Chicago trading firm is not only not sexist (“it’s realist,” he says), but is actually good for business (see above quote from said man).

“I’m not a sexist, I’m a realist,” this man (a father of two girls) repeated, justifying the systematic denial of opportunities to women in the workplace. He lauded himself for this hiring practice, as if perpetuating sexist ideals and realities — and admitting to it — is the moral high ground.

Of the over 150 employees who publicly identify themselves as working for this firm on LinkedIn, only 18 are women. That’s an 11% female workforce.

Good for business?

Not exactly.

David Futrelle explains in a February 2013 article for TIME:

“Economists see discrimination as a form of economic inefficiency — a massive, systematic misallocation of human resources. Those in the discriminated-against groups can’t bring their full talents to the table, languishing in jobs that are in many ways ‘beneath them,’ while less-talented members of more privileged groups take high-powered, high-paying jobs that are beyond their abilities, dragging down everyone with their relative incompetence.

Economists describe this, drily, in terms of ‘human capital frictions’ that impose ‘a group-specific tax for each occupation on the inputs into human capital production,’ as one recent paper puts it.

…progress against discrimination — and towards a not only fairer but also more efficient economy — has paid off in a big way. As Hsieh and his colleagues figure it, ‘[c]hanges in occupational barriers facing blacks and women can explain 15 to 20 percent of aggregate wage growth between 1960 and 2008.’ Most of this change, they say, has been ‘driven by the movement of women into high-skilled occupations.’”

When I asked how this trader’s discriminatory hiring philosophy is any different from not hiring a black person to appease racist employees (or, in his language, to protect said black person from the inevitable harassment he or she would experience), I was told it is “entirely different.”

“Racism is unacceptable,” he said.

Racism is unacceptable, and institutional sexism is strong business acumen.

Being a feminist in 2015 is hard. Not because people think I’m going to set off the fire alarm with my burning bra. And not because there’s a widespread irrational fear of the “F” word. But because it’s socially acceptable to endlessly justify sexism —prejudice or discrimination based on sex, especially discrimination against women — as realism.

It’s this kind of flawed logic that prevents women from breaking into male-dominated fields. Women comprised only 17.6% of executive officers in the finance and insurance industries in 2013, according to the 2013 Catalyst Census: Fortune 500 Women Executive Officers and Top Earners, which counts the number of women in upper management in Fortune 500 companies.

It’s this kind of flawed logic that not only boxes women out of male-dominated fields, but also perpetuates the inherent less-than, other-ness, and lack of value women are perceived to have.

In the trader’s mind, a male employee’s right to harass a qualified female employee outweighs her right to get the job she deserves.

(Remember, he can’t fire his entire workforce for harassing her, because then who would be left to do all the work?)

This man is the embodiment of why workplace diversity is so important. He’s not only self-assured, he’s externally validated by the 89% of male coworkers he’s surrounded by. How is he supposed to know he’s wrong when everyone around him says he’s right? Sameness and discrimination breed sameness and discrimination.

I left the conversation feeling furious and defeated. There’s only so much you can say to someone who earnestly believes they’re doing a service to “hot” women by not hiring them, saving them from the throes of the male-dominated workplace. I kept thinking, “Is Marissa Mayer too hot to be the CEO of Yahoo?”

Of course she’s not. It’s a ridiculous argument backed by patriarchal ideals that’s perpetuated by men, particularly in male-dominated fields.

In my parting words last night, I advised the trader to educate himself on the topic before he so explicitly defends his discriminatory workplace practices to strangers (discrimination in the workplace is, after all, illegal. The company’s hiring page states it is an “equal opportunity/affirmative action employer and does not discriminate with regard to age, race, creed, color, religion, sex, disability, pregnancy, medical condition, genetic information, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, ancestry, national or ethnic origin, citizenship status, military status or status as a disabled veteran or veteran of the Vietnam era, or any legally recognized status entitled to protection under applicable federal, state, or local anti-discrimination laws.”)

My expectation of equality for men and women doesn’t make me an idealist, just as this man’s promotion of inequality in the workplace doesn’t make him a realist.

So here I am, writing on the Internet about one man’s decision not to hire a woman because she is a woman. A “hot” one, at that.

It’s sexist. It’s discriminatory. It’s wrong. And I’m not afraid to say it.