Female company president: "I'm sorry to all the mothers I worked with"

[Starry Messenger]

This article was posted by a progressive feed on FB, as an attaboy to the author finally seeing the light. Frankly, it just pissed me the fuck off.

http://fortune.com/2015/03/03/female-company-president-im-sorry-to-all-the-mothers-i-used-to-work-with/

PowerToFly President Katharine Zaleski admits: “I didn’t realize how horrible I’d been – until I had a child of my own.”

I still am embarrassed by this memory. Five years ago I walked into an office on the twenty-fifth floor of the Manhattan headquarters of Time Inc. (which owns Fortune.) I was there to meet with Time.com’s then managing editor and pitch a partnership idea, but once I took a seat and surveyed the endless photos of her small children spread across the airy space, I decided this editor was too much of a mother to follow up on the idea.

I still went through with my proposal, but I walked out sure I would never talk to her again. She wasn’t the first and only mother whose work ethic I silently slandered. As a manager at The Huffington Post and then The Washington Post in my mid-twenties, I committed a long list of infractions against mothers or said nothing while I saw others do the same.

1) I secretly rolled my eyes at a mother who couldn’t make it to last minute drinks with me and my team. I questioned her “commitment” even though she arrived two hours earlier to work than me and my hungover colleagues the next day.

2)I didn’t disagree when another female editor said we should hurry up and fire another woman before she “got pregnant.”

<snip>

Now that she's a mom, she's touting her new company that celebrates the power and commitment of parenting...which, fine, whatever.

I hope that everyone she discriminated against sues. I don't think a mea culpa in Fortune magazine is a big enough gesture.

[elehhhhna]

1. wow. when i read the headline i assumed she'd apologize

For a lack of empathy - not for overtly being a sexist jerk!

[Starry Messenger]

2. Same here!

What she was doing is illegal, not just insensitive. It makes me ill.

[elleng]

3. She did apologize.

'Now I know who I am. I’m mother who can manage a large team from my home office or on a business trip, raise money, and build a culture for women to succeed. I’ve never been more productive, satisfied and excited about my future and my daughter’s. I wish I had recognized this years ago.

For that, I’m sorry to all the mothers I used to work with. Which brings me back to that managing editor I dissed at Time. Her name is Cathy Sharick and she has three kids. The deal never went through for a variety of reasons that included editorial fit, but we started talking six months ago. Cathy recently joined PowerToFly as our Executive Editor. She has taught me a lot about how to be more productive than I was before motherhood. I’m now looking for more Cathys to join PowerToFly because I know they can manage households, multiple schedules and very high business goals.'

[Starry Messenger]

4. "I don't think a mea culpa in Fortune magazine is a big enough gesture."

[Iris]

5. She's despicable. n/t

[DonCoquixote]

6. regardless of gender or any other disintiction

Every Rogue feels contrition when the knife is at THEIR throat.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. I'll give her credit for finally seeing the light

but I'm a bit suspicious when her timing coincides with a business venture designed to exploit the talents of the very women she used to diss.

I'd also like to know how she was raised, that she felt the need to feel superior to working women with children. That's such 1970s thinking for a millenial.

[Starry Messenger]

8. This.

She's been getting a lot of brown warm fuzzies, but at least one woman exec with kids said it rang hollow for her too:

https://www.facebook.com/lia.haberman/posts/10152756994901545?pnref=story

"I downplay being a mom at work every day because I'm a fairly private person but also because women (and men) like Katharine Zaleski have created an atmosphere where parenthood could literally keep me from getting my next job.

More effective but less splashy would have been personally apologizing to all the women she discriminated against and helping place them in great positions. But Zaleski's got a company she wants to promote. So an apology is now a convenient press play.

Not that she seems to care about public perception. She was admittedly "horrible" as a 28-year-old and bent on sabotaging other women, now she says she pities young women and has designated herself supermom and job fairy to working mothers. So the world still revolves around Zaleski's perception of right and wrong, she's just swapped targets."