RedState's lead story this morning (sorry, can't hyperlink on my iPad from the road: http://www.redstate.com/2013/02/28/yahoo-and-seriously-stupid-media-coverage/) exposes media outrage over Yahoo!'s new chief, Marissa Meyer and her edict that the struggling company would no longer allow employees to work remotely. The consensus among society do-gooders is that Meyer's policy is an affront to workers, particularly to working moms. Keep in mind, Ms. Meyer's just had a baby, herself.
It has always surprised me that telecommuting is seen as a universal good--that there are no downsides to trusting employees to manage their time and accomplish their tasks away from the office and the supervision of senior staffers. Or the assumption that senior staffers can manage staff for whom they have responsibility as effectively off-site as on. Perhaps because I have worked in a variety of settings--in most of which telecommuting doesn't work--I have a hearty skepticism of this practice. But bottom line: it is a decision that should be up to management.
As a mom of four, I'm particularly skeptical of how a policy of allowing working moms to telecommute in order to be home with their young children can possibly be effective in terms of workers actually getting anything accomplished. With newborns, yes, there
is some time during the extended nap times, but that's only if mom can keep her eyes open after being up all night. Then as they get bigger, well, at least for me, forget it. Best intentions aside, there's no way I could have produced, from home, the equivalent an 8 hour work day's worth of work. I know, I know, some women are super moms, and they can do it; but I'm just saying. . . .
Productivity and profitability, however, do not matter to the liberal elite. Their goal: keep these moms in the workforce, no matter the cost to their business. They believe that women should be allowed/encouraged/shamed to remain in the workforce no matter their ability to produce--the goal of moving women out of the home (figuratively or literally), into careers and keeping them there is the ultimate objective. Liberalism and radical feminism believe women cannot be satisfied unless they have something more than family and the enormous responsibilities that go along with raising human beings to fulfill them.
So when Meyer suggests that working from home might interfere with productivity--with the ability of Yahoo! to stay afloat in this case--she violates the core tenants of radical feminism: women should be given every special allowance to stay where they are, even if that means their company goes belly up. Yeah, yeah, leftists will say not so; that this is about all workers not being forced into the confines of the cubicle or boardroom (as though they are children being sent into the coal mines). But really, its all about women. All about keeping them where they now belong: entrenched in the dizzying, frenetic pace of maintaining a full-time career and families at the same time. Hey, not that there's anything wrong with it: I'm a full time working mom. But there is something wrong with those outside of a business condemning an executive for policies intended to save the company, simply because those policies violate some elitist vision of feminist societal utopia.
Read RedState's lead post here: http://www.redstate.com/2013/02/28/yahoo-and-seriously-stupid-media-coverage/
