This week Yahoo announced the hiring of Marissa Mayer as their new CEO. As the lead story in the Wall Street Journal’s Marketplace section, their headline article was “For Yahoo CEO, Two New Roles: Six months pregnant with her first child, Marissa Mayer must also turn around a troubled firm.” This two-page article focused primarily on Ms. Mayer’s pregnancy. The reporters interviewed female CEO’s and consultants to get their opinions on what Ms. Mayer will need to do in order to handle being a mother as CEO, and even questioned what role her husband should take.

A much shorter article, buried on page B7, looked at the state of affairs at Yahoo, assessed the challenges that lay ahead for Ms. Mayer and the skills that she brings to the role to address these challenges. Given Yahoo’s position in the marketplace and the visibility surrounding the search, I would assume that the Board was even more diligent in their selection process – choosing the person they felt best qualified for the job.

All CEO’s are humans, each facing their own personal challenges whether they are supporting an aging parent, raising children, caring for an ailing spouse, or any of a myriad of other trials of daily life that we each face. The issue at hand should not be that new CEO of Yahoo happens to be a woman, of child-bearing age, who has chosen to have a baby, but rather does this new CEO have the skills and moral compass to right Yahoo’s ship.