“I’m a dirty old man and you look attractive, Marissa.” They were the words that greeted Marissa Mayer, Yahoo’s chief executive, during her first annual shareholder meeting, when a man named George Polis took the microphone to ask about dividends.
Ignoring the statement, Ms Mayer deputed an executive to respond to Mr Polis’s query on dividends. The strategy has been consistent throughout her leadership of one of the world’s most famous companies. She has often avoided questions about Silicon Valley’s male-dominated culture. “I never play the gender card,” she told a reporter in 2015. “The moment you play into that, it’s an issue.”
That changed this week when Ms Mayer made a rare complaint about “gender-charged” reporting in an interview with the Financial Times. “I’ve tried to be gender-blind and believe tech is a gender-neutral zone but do think there has been gender-charged reporting,” she said.