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Why Reluctant Role Model Mary Barra Doesn't Want to Be Judged by Her Gender

December 17, 2015, 7:31 AM

Ideally, GM's chief executive says, it should be barely noteworthy that she's the automaker's first top female leader.

"People should be judged on how well they do the job and deliver results and whether they do it the right way," she tells Sharon Carty, editor-in--chief of Yahoo Autos. "That’s how I like to be judged, most people are like that.”   


Mary Barra turns 55 next week on Christmas Eve.

Barra, promoted to CEO two years ago this month, says in an interview with the local journalist that she was surprised her gender was treated as a big deal inside GM and beyond.

One of the biggest things she’s learned is how important it is to other people that she’s a woman.

"I think I missed it early on,” Barra said. . . . She’s come to understand that some people need role models who they can identify with to help them see a path to success, a concept she said was foreign to her at first. . . .

“I never want to get a job because I’m female,” she said. “I want to get it because I earned it and I deserve it." . . .

She didn’t understand why people found her gender such a noteworthy part of her job. . . . But now, Barra realizes that what she accepts as normal is revolutionary and inspiring for others.

Recently at a GM town hall meeting, an engineer came up to her and thanked her for being in her role because it meant his 1-year-old daughter would never live in a world where having a woman CEO of an automaker would be considered newsworthy.

The GM leader turns 55 next Thursday on Christmas Eve.

Carty, former Detroit correspondent for USA Today, writes that "Barra says the novelty of her gender seems to have worn off. In the past two years."

She has focused most of the attention about her gender into one of her own passions: Promoting science and technology studies for girls and boys.

She sees a major shortage of workers with science skills coming up through schools. . . . She is an advocate with STEM groups aimed at women, like the Let Girls Learn program through the Peace Corps.

-- Alan Stamm


Read more:  Yahoo Autos


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