Pregnant and hired

Fortune reports:

FORTUNE –Marissa Mayer, the Google (GOOG) executive who today was named Yahoo’s (YHOO) new chief executive, is pregnant.

Mayer told Fortune exclusively that her first child is due October 7. It’s a boy!

“He’s super-active,” Mayer told me in a phone call tonight, three hours after Yahoo announced her appointment. “He moves around a lot. My doctor says that he takes after his parents.”

Career-wise at least, Mayer, 37, has remained in one place for more than a decade. She was Google’s 20th employee and its first female engineer, ascending to her most recent post as vice president in charge of local and location services over a 13-year career.  …

Mayer first disclosed to the Yahoo board that she is pregnant in late June, in a meeting with Michael Wolf, a member of the board’s four-person CEO search committee. A meeting with the search committee followed, and then Mayer met with the full board last Wednesday. None of the Yahoo directors, she says, revealed any concern about hiring a pregnant chief executive. “They showed their evolved thinking,” says Mayer, who got the phone call last Thursday that she was the board’s choice to be CEO.

Excellent. Some people argue women don’t get hired for senior jobs, as people worry they will go off and have babies. There are probably a few people who think like that, so the fact the Yahoo Board hired a pregnant woman as their CEO is a great symbol of non-discrimination. They employed her, because they thought she was the best person for the job.