In light of Yahoo! Inc.'s stagnant stock and ongoing identity crisis, much of Silicon Valley cheered the news this week that CEO Carol Bartz has been coldly fired over the telephone. Still, some have suggested that Bartz's ouster might have less to do with her performance and more, or at least something, to do with her gender. Is Bartz a victim of sexism?
Quite possibly: "There's something that doesn't sit well about this whole Bartz thing," says Rebecca Greenfield at The Atlantic Wire. She was hired to milk more profits from Yahoo, and she successfully increased the company's net income by 52 percent. People didn't take issue with what she did so much as how she did it. Bartz's aggressiveness and rough language would have been praised in a male executive, but given that she's a woman, they were considered a liability, alienating colleagues, shareholders, and the press.
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