致母亲节！女总裁：“我要向所有共事过的职场妈妈道歉”

    这段记忆至今令我感到羞愧。5年前，我来到时代公司曼哈顿总部大楼25层，去和该公司时任网站总编谈一个合作意向。我在她的办公室刚一坐下，便见到宽敞的办公室里到处挂满了她孩子的照片，我当时就断定，这位总编“妈妈病”太浓，没法跟进这个意向。

    虽然我仍陈述了自己的提案，但走出她的办公室时，我在心里暗下决心，再也不跟她联系了。我曾经暗自鄙视过不少身为人母者的职业道德，她不是第一个，自然也不是唯一一个。在二十五六岁年纪，我曾先后在《赫芬顿邮报》和《华盛顿邮报》担任管理者，也是在那段时间里，我曾经伤害过不少母亲，或是在别人伤害其她母亲时保持沉默。

    • 有一次，我的团队中有一位母亲由于没法陪我们喝酒喝到最后，被我悄悄投以白眼，我还质疑了她的“奉献精神”，尽管第二天她比我们这些喝得大醉的人早两个小时来到单位上班。

    • 曾经有一名女性编辑说，我们要赶在一名女同事怀孕之前，抓紧时间炒她的鱿鱼，当时我没有表示反对。

    • 我曾经当过一次面试官，一名男性老板质问一名前来面试的三个孩子的母亲：“你怎么可能既干好这份工作，又同时照顾好你的孩子们呢？”那位母亲是一名顶级新闻制片人，她直视老板道：“不管你信不信，我喜欢在工作日离开我的孩子……就像你一样。”当时我却没有向她报以任何鼓励。

    • 我经常在下午4点半下班的时候召开会议。我当时没有意识到，这些年轻的父母可能要到托儿所去接孩子。我当时一门心思只想展示我对工作的“付出”，方法就是待在办公室里加班，哪怕我每天都拖到10点半才开始工作，而那些有孩子的父母们早上8点半就到了单位。

    对于职场母亲来说，这不啻于一种千刀万剐似的酷刑折磨——何况有时冲上来割你两刀的还是其他女性。但我一直没有意识到这一点，也没有意识当时我是一个多么糟糕的人，直到五年后，我生下了自己的女儿。

    在她出生的头一个星期，我觉得我的职场生涯彻底完了。那种感觉就像怀孕前的我对现在的我说，你已经成了一个没用的人，因为我没法再在办公室里每天坐十个小时了，当然我肯定也无法再喝酒到深夜了。

    作为一个女人，当时我只有两个选择：一是像以前一样回到工作中去，永远不去照看我的孩子；二是放弃工作，甚至放弃我花了十年时间苦心经营的事业。当我看着我的小女儿的时候，我知道我不想让她陷入像我一样的困境。

    我读了桑德伯格的《向前一步》，希望它能够激励我，但读完后我却更郁闷了。在我看来，书中的信息是明确的：如果你想在一个男权社会中成功，就要忍受你做出的选择带来的后果。我又读了一遍安妮•玛莉•斯劳特的《为什么女人不能拥有一切》，它只是再次描绘了另一个现实，我曾是推波助澜者之一，直到我自己也要面对这个问题。

    休产假时，我还是NowThisNews公司（这是一家由《赫芬顿邮报》的团队成员创办的公司）的员工，当时这些想法在我脑中整日萦绕不去。就在那时，现在的联合创始人米利娜•巴利找到了我。她对我说，她打算成立一家公司，专门把女性与一些可以在家工作的技术职位进行匹配。我意识到了这家公司拥有巨大的发展前景，并且可以造福未来十年踏入职场的十亿女性，于是我毅然辞职，并彻底退出了新闻业。

    如果开发者的职位适合女性在家工作，那么其它领域可能很快也会跟进。通过让女性在家工作，企业将更尊重女性的生产力价值，女性也无需花大量时间坐班，或者去酒吧参加社交活动。从此母亲们就有了第三个选择，即留在职场或部分留在职场，甚至可以进入一些工作机会非常有限的领域。

    目前适合远程工作的工具已经齐备了，比如Slack、Jira、Skype、Trello以及Google Docs等。研究显示，远程工作者的工作效率甚至可能更高。另外，哈佛大学的一项研究也表明，无论是有孩子还是没有孩子的，“千禧一代”都喜欢更高的工作灵活性。

    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 ownsFortune.) 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.

    • 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.

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

    • I sat in a job interview where a male boss grilled a mother of three and asked her, “How in the world are you going to be able to commit to this job and all your kids at the same time?” I didn’t give her any visual encouragement when the mother – who was a top cable news producer at the time – looked at him and said, “Believe it or not, I like being away from my kids during the workday… just like you.”

    • I scheduled last minute meetings at 4:30pm all of the time. It didn’t dawn on me that parents might need to pick up their kids at daycare. I was obsessed with the idea of showing my commitment to the job by staying in the office “late” even though I wouldn’t start working until 10:30 am while parents would come in at 8:30 am.

    For mothers in the workplace, it’s death by a thousand cuts – and sometimes it’s other women holding the knives. I didn’t realize this – or how horrible I’d been – until five years later, when I gave birth to a daughter of my own.

    Within her first week, I became consumed by the idea that my career was over. It was almost as if my former self was telling me I was worthless because I wouldn’t be able to continue sitting in an office for ten hours a day. And I certainly wouldn’t be able to get drinks at the last minute.

    I was now a woman with two choices: go back to work like before and never see my baby; or pull back on my hours and give up the career I’d built over the last ten years. When I looked at my little girl, I knew I didn’t want her to feel trapped like me.

    I read Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In, thinking it would motivate me. It only depressed me more. To me, the message was clear: put up with the choices made by a male-dominated work culture if you want to succeed. I re-read Anne Marie Slaughter’s piece on “Why Women Can’t Have It All.” It just painted another reality that I had contributed to until it became my own problem.

    While I was on maternity leave from NowThis News (a startup funded by members of The Huffington Post team), still wrestling with these thoughts, I was approached by my now co-founder, Milena Berry. She told me she had an idea to launch a company that would match women in technical positions they could do from home. I decided to quit my job and leave journalism, realizing this startup had enormous potential for the one billion women entering the workforce over the next ten years.

    If the developer placements worked, then other fields might follow. By enabling women to work from home, women could be valued for their productivity and not time spent sitting in an office or at a bar bonding afterwards. Mothers could have a third option that would allow them to either remain in the workforce or be a part of it even from areas with few job options.

    All the tools exist for remote work – Slack, Jira, Skype, Trello, Google Docs. Research shows remote workers can be more productive. Furthermore, millennials – with or without kids – want that flexibility, a Harvard study found.