评论
打印
In 1985, when I became a journalist, I was invited to join a group of female colleagues who met regularly to discuss how rotten it was being a woman at work. I turned up once but never again: I was irritated by the complaining and couldn’t help noticing the people who were doing the most of it were the least good at their jobs. If you’re not great at what you do, I thought, you shouldn’t blame it on your sex.
在1985年，我成了一名记者，我应邀加入了一个女同事小组，她们定期聚在一起吐槽当一名职业女性有多倒霉。我露了一次面就再也不去了：我被那些牢骚搞得很不爽并不禁发现，抱怨得最起劲的，正是那些最不称职的人。如果你无法胜任自己的工作，我觉得，你不该将其归咎于自己的性别。
In 30 years I have progressed a bit in my views. Whether people are good at their jobs and whether they are suffering from gender bias are different questions. Where there is sexism, making a fuss — though boring for both the person doing the complaining and for the person listening — is important. If nothing is said, nothing changes.
30年来，我的观点有了一些进步。人们是否擅长他们的工作，和他们是否受到性别歧视是两码事。如果存在性别歧视，说出来很重要——虽然说的人觉得抱怨得没意思，听的人也觉得厌烦。如果无人发声，就不会有改观。
Financial Times readers, it seems, have not progressed so much. Marissa Mayer last week complained to the FT that the media had it in for her because she was a woman — and FT readers responded as I did all those years ago. One wrote: “You are incompetent — it’s as simple as that, Mayer. Stop trying to hide behind ‘gender’ victimisation nonsense, please.”
英国《金融时报》（简称FT）读者们的思想看起来还没有进步到这个阶段。玛丽萨•迈耶(Marissa Mayer)不久前向FT抱怨称，媒体故意跟她过不去，就因为她是个女人——而FT读者们的反应与我多年前的看法如出一辙。一位读者写道：“是你无能——就那么简单，迈耶。别再拿‘性别歧视’受害者那套无稽之谈作挡箭牌了，拜托。”
A couple of hundred posted similar comments. She had done a rubbish job as CEO of Yahoo, sexism had nothing to do with it.
有几百人发表了类似的评论。作为雅虎(Yahoo)的CEO，她干得差劲极了，这丝毫无关性别歧视。
Their vehemence makes me smell a rat. Ms Mayer may have done a poor job. But are they right that there has been no sexism in the reporting? And how does one measure it?
他们的激烈反应让我觉得有些不对劲。迈耶或许干得差劲。但报道中当真不存在性别歧视吗？而这又该如何衡量呢？
Ms Mayer complained at how the media is obsessed with women’s clothes, citing Hillary Clinton and her pantsuits. This is true, but the attire gender gap is closing — last week the FT ran an entire article on Boris Johnson’s backpack. Either way, I’m not sure it’s such a big deal. I’m interested in what women (and men) wear, and so long as pantsuits are not an alternative to policies, I see little harm in it.
迈耶抱怨媒体是如何津津乐道于女性的着装，以希拉里•克林顿(Hillary Clinton)和她的长裤套装为例。这倒没错，不过穿戴问题上的性别差异正在缩小——不久前FT就刊登了一篇文章，通篇大谈鲍里斯•约翰逊(Boris Johnson)的背包。不管怎样，我没觉得这有什么大不了。我就对女人们（和男人们）穿什么很感兴趣，而且只要不是只谈裤装而不谈政策，我看不出这有什么危害。
In any case, Ms Mayer can’t really protest at press intrusion into her wardrobe, given the photo of her in Vogue a couple of years ago lying upside down on an uncomfortable bit of garden furniture in skin-tight blue sheath and bondage sandals, holding an iPad reflecting an image of herself.
再说，迈耶不会真的抗议出版物报道她的衣着，看看几年前《Vogue》杂志上她的照片：身着蓝色紧身连衣裙和系带鞋的她，倒着躺在一张不太舒适的户外家具上，手中的iPad屏幕上显示的是她本人的形象。
If I were CEO I wouldn’t have posed like that in a million years, but then that’s because upside down and thus clad I would not have looked a pretty sight. Ms Mayer, on the other hand, looked a very pretty sight, and did the world a favour by proving you can be gorgeous, blonde, love clothes and run a big company in male-dominated IT.
如果我是CEO，我就永远不会摆出那个姿势，但那是因为我要是穿成这样头朝下躺着会很难看。然而，迈耶在那张照片上却相当惊艳，顺便向世人证明，你可以光彩照人、是个金发靓女，热爱穿衣打扮，同时在男性主导的IT业掌管一家大公司。
Equally, people have cried sexism at the endless articles about her as a mother. From the time she was appointed when pregnant, we have watched her through two pregnancies, tutted at the scant maternity leave, marvelled at the on-site nursery and nannies and ogled endless photos of the cute baby girls in the office.
同样，人们高呼铺天盖地的关于她母亲身份的文章存在性别歧视。自从她孕期获得雅虎任命以来，我们已经目睹了她的两度孕期，为她短促的产假议论纷纷，为她办公室里安置的婴儿房和保姆们惊叹不已，也被她办公室里那对可爱的女宝宝的海量照片萌到。
By contrast no one writes about the children of Yahoo founders David Filo and Jerry Yang — their Wikipedia pages don’t even reveal that they have any. This looks like gender bias, but again it is understandable. We don’t have many female CEOs with babies, and so I’m grateful to Ms Mayer for showing me how she does it.
相形之下，雅虎创始人戴维•费罗(David Filo)及杨致远(Jerry Yang)的孩子们却无人问津——他们的维基百科页面甚至连他们有没有孩子都没说。这看起来倒像性别歧视，但又可以理解。有宝宝的女性CEO并不多见，所以我很感激迈耶让我看到她是怎么做的。
The only bad things are the opinions expressed over whether she is a good mother. Such judgment is no longer for women only — Mark Zuckerberg has posted almost as many pictures of his offspring online as has Ms Mayer — only he is judged a wonderful father on the basis of having taken his baby for a jab, while she is a bad mother because she works too hard.
唯一不好的是那些关于她是不是个好妈妈的评论。这种评价不再只针对女性——马克•扎克伯格(Mark Zuckerberg)在网上晒娃的次数与迈耶不相上下。只不过，人们仅凭扎克伯格带宝宝打了一次疫苗就认定他是个称职的爸爸，却认定迈耶是个不称职的妈妈，因为她工作太努力。
There is an even more important bias — sheer volume of stories. Last year 4,200 articles were printed in English about her, more than four times as many than were about her opposite number at AOL, Tim Armstrong (also bought by Verizon last year) — which is particularly remarkable given how hard he tried to be newsworthy via a string of gaffes.
还有一项更重要的歧视——报道的绝对数量。去年有关迈耶的英文报道有4200篇，几乎四倍于美国在线（AOL，去年也被Verizon收购）的男性CEO蒂姆•阿姆斯特朗(Tim Armstrong)。考虑到阿姆斯特朗多么努力地试图通过一连串的失言让自己上新闻，这一悬殊格外醒目。
We are simply more interested in women CEOs and we will go on being more interested until there are more of them. This is not an advantage — the pressure is bad enough anyway without everyone reporting on your every move. It would be enough to make one do a Ms Mayer, spend $500,000 of company money on private security guards — and generate yet another adverse story.
我们就是对女性CEO更感兴趣，而且我们还将继续保持这种兴趣，直到女CEO越来越多。这并不是一个优势——压力原本就够大的了，更何况每个人都在盯着你的一举一动。这足以让人像迈耶那样，花掉公司50万美元用于私人安保——又制造出一条负面新闻。
