好英语网雅虎新任女首席执行官的挑战
Marissa Mayer has blazed trails in Silicon Valley — as Google’s first female engineer, as one of its most prominent executives when she oversaw its search business, and as a serious technologist who was also willing to show her feminine side.
玛丽莎·梅耶尔(Marissa Mayer)在硅谷开了很多先例：她曾是谷歌的第一位女工程师；曾主管谷歌的搜索引擎业务，是该公司最重要的高管之一；同时，作为严肃的技术人员，她也并不掩饰自己女性的一面。
Now she will blaze a new trail, as a pregnant woman taking the helm of a major public company.
现在她将要开另一个先例：怀孕的同时还掌管一家著名上市公司。
On Monday, the same day she became Yahoo’s chief executive, Ms. Mayer wrote on Twitter that she and her husband, Zachary Bogue, a financier, are expecting a boy, their first child, on Oct. 7.
周一是梅耶尔在雅虎担任首席执行官的第一天，当天她在自己的Twitter上写道，她和作为金融家的丈夫扎卡里·博格(Zachary Bogue)预计将在10月7日迎来他们的第一个孩子，是个男孩。
Part of the reason that Ms. Mayer is an anomaly is her age, 37. Most executives reach the top level later in their careers, after their childbearing years. Just 20 companies in the Fortune 500 have women chief executives, and all but three of them, including Ms. Mayer, are over 50. Deanna M. Mulligan, chief of Guardian Life Insurance, is 48, and Heather Bresch, chief of Mylan, is 43.
梅耶尔与众不同的原因之一是她的年龄。她今年37岁。大多数高管都是在孩子出生后很多年才进入事业顶峰。在《财富》世界500强公司中，只有20家公司的首席执政官是女性，而且她们当中包括梅耶尔在内只有三人年龄小于50岁。守护者人寿保险公司(Guardian Life Insurance)的迪安娜·M.·马利根(Deanna M. Mulligan)，今年48岁，迈兰(Mylan)公司的希瑟·布雷施(Heather Bresch)，今年43岁。
Some people who study women in business were reluctant to discuss Ms. Mayer’s pregnancy, saying that it was irrelevant to her ability to run Yahoo and that the children of male chief executives were not news.
一些研究商业女性的人不愿意讨论梅耶尔怀孕的事，称这与她管理雅虎公司的能力毫不相关，而且男性首席执行官有孩子也不是新闻。
“Many of the women C.E.O.’s of major corporations like Yahoo have children, and pregnancy is a short period in one’s life,” said Toby Stuart, director of the entrepreneurship center at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, who has studied gender in the tech business. “Among career-oriented professional women, relatively late pregnancies are common.”
“很多像雅虎这样的大公司的女性首席执行官都有孩子，而且怀孕只不过是一个人生命中很短的一段时间，”加州大学伯克利分校哈斯商学院创业学中心主任托比·斯图尔特(Toby Stuart) 说。 他一直从事技术公司的性别研究。“以事业为重的职业女性，怀孕通常相对较晚。”
But others said that by taking a powerful job while she was expecting a baby, Ms. Mayer was a role model for working women.
但其他一些人则认为梅耶尔在怀孕同时还接手重要工作，是职业女性的榜样。
“We finally have reached a point where a woman could be pregnant and stepping into that kind of big job,” said Sharon Vosmek, chief executive of Astia, a nonprofit group that advises female entrepreneurs. “Her age makes it exciting, not just because she’s quite youthful but because she’s also in this prime stage of life when so many women feel they have to step out or step back.”
“我们终于到了这样一个阶段：女性在怀孕期间依然可以接受如此重要的工作，”一家给女性企业家提供咨询服务的非营利性机构Astia的总裁莎伦·沃斯迈克 (Sharon Vosmek)说。“这件事很令人兴奋是因为她的年龄，并不是因为她还年轻，而是因为在她的这个黄金阶段，很多女性都感到她们不得不退出或者倒退。”
Another female tech industry executive, Sheryl Sandberg, 42, Facebook’s chief operating officer, also often talks about how she balances work and family.
另一位技术公司的女高管谢里尔·桑德贝格(Sheryl Sandberg)今年42岁。作为Facebook的首席运营官，她也经常谈到自己如何平衡工作和家庭。
Ms. Mayer, who faces a big challenge in turning around the struggling Yahoo, plans to take just a few weeks of maternity leave and to work while she is out, she told Fortune, which first reported her pregnancy.
梅耶尔临着改变雅虎目前艰难处境的挑战，她告诉《财富》杂志，她计划只休几周的产假，而且在休假期间也会继续工作。《财富》杂志首次报道了她怀孕的消息。
Members of Yahoo’s board “showed their evolved thinking” by hiring her in the final months of her pregnancy, she said in the Fortune interview.
雅虎董事会在她怀孕的最后几个月依然雇佣她，“说明他们的意识进步了，”梅耶尔在接受《财富》杂志采访时称。
Silicon Valley, your track record on women isn’t great. This is an opportunity.
硅谷历来不是一个女强人辈出的地方。但这次是个机会。