致母亲节！女总裁：“我要向所有共事过的职场妈妈道歉”

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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

Q168

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.”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。

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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.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。

Q168

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.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。