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.