Robert Galbraith / Reuters

"My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it." new Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer said.

 It’s unusual enough to hear that a major corporation anointed a woman as CEO, but a pregnant CEO?

Yahoo announced Monday that Marissa Mayer, a former Google executive, was taking the reins of the technology company, and hours later it was disclosed that she was also expecting her first child in October.

Mayer chose to disclose her pregnancy to the company’s board before she got the final job offer, and the board was supposedly fine and dandy with the news.

"They showed their evolved thinking," Mayer told Fortune. 

Yahoo's board may have been reassured by Mayer's unusual description of how she plans to handle the time off she will take to have a baby.

"My maternity leave will be a few weeks long and I'll work throughout it," Mayer said.

It's the kind of news that may get other pregnant women at Yahoo further down the chain worried about the time they put in after childbirth.

Many executives in Corporate America today tout how they lead by example and show their employees that work-life balance is critical. Taking emails while dealing with a newborn might be tougher than first-time-mom-to-be Mayer realizes.

Although it is also worth noting that not all women are as lucky as Mayer to even have a maternity leave benefit. (The United States is one of the only industrialized nations without mandated maternity leave.)

In any case Yahoo's board is to be applauded for looking beyond Mayer's pregnancy to the leadership she can provide the company over the long term.

“Appointing a woman as CEO is pretty rare in and of itself, and having a pregnant one is even more rare,” said Eden King, co-author of "How Women Can Make It Work: The Science of Success." “Many women who reach that level do not have children at all, much less are pregnant at the time.”

What ever does happen for Yahoo's newest CEO, her appointment will up the ante on the working mommy debate. But don't expect it to change the work world.

“It’s a sample size of one, and it’s hard to know if this represents social change. I certainly have hope, but most of the evidence shows that there’s substantial discrimination of pregnant women who are working," said King, who’s an associate professor of psychology at George Mason University with a focus on women and the workplace.

Indeed, the number of pregnancy discrimination claims have been rising in the last decade, and that prompted the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to hold a public hearing earlier this year to address the problem. “A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the EEOC’s general counsel during the February hearing.

It’s unlawful, he stressed, to deprive a pregnant woman "the opportunity to sustain herself or her family based on stereotypical assumptions” that she won’t be as dedicated to her employers as a man or a woman who isn't pregnant.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year. That's down slightly from 2010's total claims of 6,119, according to the EEOC. 

The Pregnancy Discrimination Act was signed into law in 1978 in order to stop such bias, but many women's advocacy groups believe it doesn’t go far enough. A bill introduced in May called the Pregnant Workers Fairness Act, which is similar to the American With Disabilities Act, is supposed to fill the donut hole that the previous act left open when it comes to making accommodations for pregnant women in the workplace. 

“Equal opportunity in the workplace is an essential right in this country, and it is deplorable that women are still being fired, forced out of their jobs, and denied employment and promotion opportunities because they become pregnant," said Debra Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. "The Pregnant Workers Fairness Act is badly needed legislation that would help stem this discrimination and benefit women and their families tremendously.”

But in the end, bias against pregnant workers and whether they’ll land a certain job often comes down to perceptions, maintained King. In most cases, she said, the discrimination is based on a belief that a woman won’t be able to handle the job, or chose not to work after they have children.

In the case of Yahoo’s Mayer, she’s made it clear she’ll be more than productive in her new gig even as a mom.

Yahoo spokeswoman Dana Lengkeek said Mayer was not available for interviews Tuesday, but directed NBCNews.com to the Fortune article. Mayer did tweet the pregnancy news late Monday: "Another piece of good news today - @zackbogue and I are expecting a new baby boy!" (Zack Bogue is her husband.)

Mayer has a tough road ahead given the many Yahoo CEOs before her who have tried to turn the beleaguered company around in the last few years. There is no doubt Wall Street will be closely watching her progress. How will a pregnant CEO be perceived by investors?

"Turning Yahoo around is likely going to be a near impossible task; the stress, at least initially, is likely to be similar to that stress of starting Google, and you add to that the stress of having a child and the result could be catastrophic for one or the other," said technology analyst Rob Enderle. "On the other hand, this pregnancy might become a forcing function.  Often inexperienced turnaround CEOs learn too late the necessity of building a very strong balanced team; in order to take the pressure off of her during her pregnancy building such a team will have higher priority and, in the end, it will be the team that will do this not the CEO alone." 

The pregnancy, he continued, "may actually help focus Marissa on doing something that often is neglected and could actually better assure the result.   In the end her job is to turn Yahoo around; how she gets there isn’t as important. Being pregnant could become a best practice which would screw a lot of male CEOs out there."    

How women handle their pregnancies and how they disclose them, will likely impact their careers, King noted.

“Marissa Mayer made the decision to tell the company before the offer, which was ethical for her to do but not legally required,” she said. “I know women who waited to disclose pregnancy until after they got a job or promotion to protect the jobs they deserved.”

On a personal note, King admitted that she was pregnant when she was up for a promotion but waited to tell her co workers and managers until after she secured the position. "I have supportive supervisors and colleagues but I didn't want to chance it," she said. "I know the research."

Did you ever face a similar situation while job hunting? How did you handle it? Let us know. 

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La Salle University

Jennifer Ngo, now a special agent for the FBI, during her playing days at La Salle University

Jennifer Ngo, 32, a special agent for the FBI, played basketball when she was in college. Elyse Darefsky, 54, an IT manager at Cigna, was a big collegiate volleyball and basketball player. And Sarah Ann Slater, 23, who starts graduate school at the London School of Economics in the fall, was a junior tennis champ.

All three women credit sports for their achievements beyond the playing field, and studies show playing sports in your youth can indeed contribute to future career success.

“For me, it was about being part of something bigger than yourself,” said Ngo, who also played soccer growing up. “As I got older, it helped me with my career.”

Their experiences point to how important it is for girls to have opportunities in athletics. They also underscore the significance of Title IX, which paved the way for more gender equity in high school and college sports, and celebrates its 40^th anniversary this month.

Engaging in sports in youth can help women, and men, attain career success later in life, and many prominent women often point to that experience as a reason for their ability to climb the ladder.

Irene Rosenfeld, CEO of Kraft Foods, played everything from field hockey to basketball when she was in high school; former Alaska governor and vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin touted her sporting past as a basketball player for the Wasilla Warriors; and SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro was a lacrosse player in college.

Of her lacrosse background at Franklin & Marshall College, where she captained the first varsity team in 1977, Schapiro told Lacrosse Magazine in the March issue, that the game helped her professional life.

“Lacrosse is truly a team endeavor,” she said. “You have work together, you have to be constantly mindful of where your teammates are, you have to be willing to be in the supporting role, you have to be able to read signals and be prepared to regroup — all of these are important to workplace success. It also taught me to take risks.”

According to a report by research firm Catalyst published in May, 82 percent of women executives played organized sports after elementary school, and nearly 60 percent said it gave them “a competitive edge over others in the business world.” 

Learning how to compete is among the top life skills youth sport members gain from their participation, according to research from Boston University’s School of Education published last year.

There is “a direct transfer of life skills from sport to work,” found the research titled “Career Success and Life Skill Development Through Sports,” which was part of a doctoral thesis by Gavin Bruce Barton.

He found that besides competitiveness, sports participation also developed an individual’s work ethic, ability to handle pressure, resilience, teamwork and confidence.

Surprisingly, the study also found, that “sport participation as a source of life skill development was cited far more frequently than family, work or education.”

And, the author added, “Life skills developed in sport can contribute to later work success.”

You don’t have to tell Cigna’s Darefsky’s that. “I learned more playing sports than I did in school,” she explained. “I was an introvert, and the confidence that you gain playing sports, you can’t measure that.”

She recalled going on her first job interview at Cigna in her final year of college, right after her basketball team at Clark University had a huge win over Dartmouth. “It gave me a sense of confidence,” she said, allowing her to nail the interview.

Slater, the recent grad who played tennis, also has seen the benefits.

Courtesy of Sarah Ann Slater

Sarah Ann Slater

“Being a part of sports actively in my youth and throughout my adolescence really taught me a lot about discipline, time management, and taking responsibility for myself and my own successes or failures,” she said. “Even though I am not active in competitive sports any more I was able to successfully transfer those skills into other arenas of my life, mainly academics as a college student, and they continue to be a part of all decisions I make as I go forward with my life.”

Clearly, youth sports can be an ultimate career boon, and Title IX has opened the door for many women to participate and then reap the future benefits, said Marilyn Strawbridge, professor of physical education at Butler University in Indianapolis, who has studied the impact of sports on women.

Despite the law’s success, however, we have a long way to go when it comes to ensuring more girls get some serious locker room time, an experience that will only help them as they go out into the work world.

“Title IX has been wonderful but there’s still parity to be reached,” stressed Strawbridge. “Unfortunately we’re still seeing lower rates of sports participation by girls in high school and college and they still get a smaller part of the athletics dollar.”

And that’s a problem given the payoff sports engagement offers women later in their careers and in their lives overall, she pointed out.

“Women in sports are better equipped to view themselves as equals; they know how to compete and put themselves out there, and take risks for something better,” she explained. “They live with consequence and are healthier individuals all the way around, mentally and physically.”

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Women can have it all if they fight for what they need.

That was the message that came from a powerful woman who sparked a national debate last week about women and their success in the workplace and as mothers.

Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former U.S. State Department official and now a Princeton professor, spoke about her The Atlantic article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”, Monday on TODAY, and wanted to make it clear that her piece was not negative but more of a call to action to women struggling with balancing work and life.

“Women have come leaps and bounds,” she said about the advancements women have made in the workplace, “but we need another round of change.”

Working mothers, she continued, make it to a point in their career where they’re beginning to climb the ladder of success, but then they end up feeling “unbelievably torn” when family and work responsibilities clash.

Indeed, many women are questioning whether they can really have it all. An informal poll taken last week in an article about Slaughter’s story and the controversy that ensured, asked “Do you think women can have it all?” found only 11 percent of the nearly 4,000 respondents felt it was possible, compared to 48 percent that offered a resounding “no” to the question.

But in a sign of hope, 41 percent voted: “Maybe, when the workplace changes.”

And it’s change Slaughter wants to see.

“We need to be honest about how hard it is,” she said about the first step women need to take. And secondly, she stressed, “you have to ask for what you need. If you need to work from home, ask for it.”

In the end, she added, it’s all about a serious “desire for change.”

Change needs to happen on a larger scale as well, maintained Debra L. Ness, president of the National Partnership for Women & Families. 

"Most of America’s women and their families are confronted on a daily basis with the fact that ‘having it all’ is still a distant dream, and we know that it will not get better until our workplaces are family friendly," she said. "We need policies like paid sick days and paid family and medical leave for all workers, and all workers need the flexibility to be caregivers and breadwinners for their families."

Slaughter's article, she added, "should be a call to action for employers and lawmakers to finally address the growing demand for workplaces that meet the needs of 21st century families."

The debate over whether working women can have it all and who’s to blame if they don’t is getting lots of attention this week because another high-powered woman entered the fray.

“I believe that we can ‘have it all at the same time.’ But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured,” writes Anne-Marie Slaughter, a former U.S. State Department official, in an article titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” in The Atlantic this week.

Courtesy of Princeton

Anne-Marie Slaughter

Slaughter is a Princeton politics professor who left her job last year as director of policy planning in the State Department in part to spend more time with her family. Her essay has brought the issue to the forefront nationally, creating a dialogue that could be a watershed moment for the work-life-balance wrangle.

With women now making up about 50 percent of the workforce, working mothers are brushing aside the mommy wars and finally asking hard questions about whether the 1950s "Company Man" model needs a serious retooling. Given that women still make less than their male counterparts and hold fewer than 20 percent of the corner office seats, everyone is wondering when equity will finally come to the workplace and make it more friendly for working women.

Slaughter sees her piece as a call to action.

"What we know about culture change is that there are tipping points," she told the New York Times' parenting blog Thursday. "Norms can change dramatically. On the one hand, it’s harder because we can’t point to very specific things and say, change that, but once it starts changing, it’s likely to change much faster than we’d expect. I’m basically trying to give people the space to start demanding those kinds of changes." 

The key question, what needs to change? 

Two well-known successful women with divergent thoughts on the issue are at the heart of this debate.

In one corner is Slaughter, who believes working moms have been sold a bill of goods when it comes to work-life balance. In the other corner is Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook’s chief operating officer, who’s gotten work-life-acclaim for her candid views during an Internet video TED Talk in 2010, and subsequent speeches, on how women can juggle it all if they work hard enough.

Mike Segar / Reuters

Sheryl Sandberg

From Slaughter’s article:

“I still strongly believe that women can ‘have it all’ (and that men can too). I believe that we can ‘have it all at the same time.’ But not today, not with the way America’s economy and society are currently structured.” 

From Sandberg’s talk:

“If two years ago you didn’t take a promotion and some guy next to you did. If Three years ago you stopped looking for new opportunities, you’re going to be bored because you should have kept your foot on the gas pedal. Don’t leave before you leave. Stay in. Keep your foot on the gas pedal until the very day you need to leave to take a break for a child.”

Slaughter actually called Sandberg out on her statements, writing: “Although couched in terms of encouragement, Sandberg’s exhortation contains more than a note of reproach. We who have made it to the top, or are striving to get there, are essentially saying to the women in the generation behind us: ‘What’s the matter with you?’”

On Friday, the New York Times weighed in on the issue with its own piece titled “Elite Women Put New Spin on Old Debate Over Balancing Work and Family” by Jodi Kantor.

Slaughter’s article, Kantor writes, “added to a renewed feminist conversation that is bringing fresh twists to bear on longstanding concerns about status, opportunity and family. Unlike earlier iterations, it is being led not by agitators who are out of power, but by elite women at the top of their fields, like the comedian Tina Fey, the Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg and now Ms. Slaughter. In contrast to some earlier barrier-breakers from Gloria Steinem to Condoleezza Rice, these women have children, along with husbands who do as much child-rearing as they do, or more.”

While women like Slaughter and Sandberg have the prominence to get their voices heard, are they really speaking for average working women? 

We’d love to hear from all of you on what you think needs to be done to accommodate women in the workplace today. Please share your ideas with us on how your employer can better help you juggle work and family. 

Reshma Jagsi, an associate professor and physician researcher at the University of Michigan Health System, uncovered some sobering news recently.

When it comes to the gender wage gap, even top female physicians in academia like Jagsi herself can’t catch a break.

Jagsi is the lead author of a study published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association that looked at similar groups of men and women who are midcareer physician researchers and found that even among these professionals, income inequality exists.

"It is disappointing," she said about her findings. "We would like to think in medicine these kinds of things don't affect our profession."

The pay disparity between women and men has been long-documented, but often people brush such reports aside because they claim that they don’t look at the whole picture, including choices women may make.

"We thought if we focused on the cream of the crop of physician researchers, all at the same point in their careers, all doing the same work, and if we controlled for specialty and work hours, we could understand what's driving the gender difference," Jagsi explained. "Disturbingly, even after we controlled for all those factors, the male doctors were paid more than the female doctors."

The mean salary for women physician researchers was $167,669, compared to $200,433 for their male counterparts. Even after adjusting for specialty, academic rank, leadership positions, publications and research time, the study found that women made about $12,000 less than men. And over the course of their careers, she added, women in this study will end up earning $350,000 less than men doing the same type of work.

What makes this study unique is that researchers took pains to make sure they were comparing apples to apples. All the physicians in the study had received prestigious National Institutes of Health grants and went on to work for academic institutions.

According to the researchers, “this study, which considered a homogeneous population of physicians, demonstrates a substantial and significant gender difference in salary, one-third of which is unexplained by differences in specialty, productivity or numerous other measured factors.”

Researchers did find some differences between male and female physician researchers, including the percentage of leadership positions they held and the medical specialties they chose.

• Women held fewer of the top jobs, and that could explain some of the disparity in pay, but, the study pointed out, “being passed over for a leadership position may be part of the same process that leads a woman to advance more slowly and be paid less than her male peers.”
• Women also were less likely to be in higher paying specialties, except obstetrics and gynecology. With respect to this, the researchers said, “It may be important to consider the gender gap without adjustment for specialty if women do not choose but rather are encouraged to occupy lower-paid specialties or if those specialties pay less partly because they are predominated by women.”

And as for the mommy penalty, aka, women making less because they choose to pare down their careers for motherhood, the researchers found the notion was not supported in their sample:

“Sex differences in compensation may be related to parental status, with mothers potentially more likely to sacrifice pay for unobserved job characteristics such as flexibility and fathers potentially more likely to wish to earn more to support their families. However, in contrast to some other studies, we did not observe any interaction between gender and parental status; even women without children had lower pay than men. Thus, we found no evidence suggesting differential influence of parental status on priorities or values of the male vs. female academic physicians in this sample.”

The report is further evidence that women do get shortchanged when it comes to their paychecks, and the level of their professional attainment does not matter. 

Many have realized the problem for a long time, but legislation to help deal with the problem known as the Paycheck Fairness Act was blocked by Senate Republicans last week.

Catherine Hill, research director of the American Association of University Women, had hoped the bill would motivate employers to start addressing the issue of pay disparity. “The best employers are doing things they should when it comes to pay, but it would be a reminder for all those other employers to catch up,” she said.

The act would have forced employers to create more transparency when it comes to pay, and that's exactly what Jagsi said is needed to help narrow the wage gap.

Given her research, Jagsi believes the persistent disparity in pay in medicine, and other professions, could be a function of gender bias in the workplace. "It's important to consider the role of bias, but I think it much more likely hidden latent unconscious gender bias we all harbor."

Jagsi said she doesn't know if she's underpaid but she said she spoke to her departmental administrator Friday about standardizing the way employees are paid in order to provide transparency. He told her the issue is "very complicated." 

To that, she responded, "We do a lot of things in medicine and in society that are complicated. I think our findings merit attention and action."  

There are two new women in the boardroom of Italian automaker Fiat -- Joyce Victoria Bigio and Patience Wheatcroft.

It's great news, but don't get all warm and fuzzy over Fiat. The company was pretty much strong-armed into adding women to its all-male board because of a new law that requires Italian firms to have at least one-third women board members by 2015, according to a story in the Wall Street Journal today.

Other countries, including Norway, have imposed such quotas and many have reaped the benefits of having more women voices in the big chairs. But it's not even something that's seriously considered in the United States, even though less than 20 percent of board seats are held by women at U.S. firms.

In fact, some firms won't even consider women board members when asked by their shareholders to just think about more gals for board positions.

Last year, Calvert Investments and Connecticut’s Treasurer tried to get Urban Outfitters to agree to consider bringing women and minorities onto its seven-member, all-white male board.

“What we asked was that every time they consider a slate of directors, they also consider a woman and or a minority as part of that slate,” said Aditi Mohapatra, a senior analyst with Calvert, an investment management company that focuses on socially-conscious investing said at the time. The shareholder proposal didn’t require that more diverse candidates be appointed, she noted, just that they agree to make a concerted effort to at least think about diversity.

Urban Outfitters didn’t budge.

“They said, ‘We don’t have any diversity problem,'” Mohapatra said. 

U.S. legislators may not have the feistiness of their Italian counterparts to make companies care. The best they could do was a 2009 Securities & Exchange Commission rule requiring that companies disclose how diversity is considered when new board members are nominated. Unfortunately, the rule didn’t mandate that companies actually have a diversity plan, Janice Ellig, co-CEO of executive search firm Chadick Ellig, told me a while back.

“I say put more teeth into those rules,” she demanded.

But Ellig stopped short of recommending U.S. companies be forced to meet gender quotas on boards, or in management jobs.

Unfortunately, we need to push the envelope here to change the very male board landscape. Italian legislators, and lawmakers from other countries, realize change won't come unless some diversity earthquake creates a seismic wave.

In Norway, board quotas have made a difference.

According to an article in the UK's The Guardian written Agnes Bolsø, associate professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology:

It is very hard to analyse the impact on profitability, and research on the economic effect of more women on boards is inconclusive. What is beyond doubt, however, is that the policy has paved the way for women to influence corporate decision making.

And that influence may be exactly what Corporate America may need to help it work for all employees, and not just executives who are pulling in record paychecks.

A 2011 study of Norway's quotas by professors at Kellogg School of Management and the University of Virginia titled "A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas" found "a relative decline in annual profits over assets associated with the quota" but the reasoning shed light on how women may look differently at the corporate world than their male counterparts:

Decomposing the change in profits, we identify increased labor costs, from fewer layoffs and higher relative employment, as the primary cause. This suggests that compliance with the quota was costly for firms in the short term, but raises important questions about the long-term impacts. The fewer layoffs may reflect a more stakeholder-oriented attitude on the part of female directors, or a more long-term perspective if women are more willing to incur higher short-term labor costs to increase workers’ productivity in future periods.

Translation: Women may not look to just fire people as a way to prop up the bottom line.

This concept sounds foreign in today's economic environment, but it may be what brings back a bit of equity to the business world. To get there, our nation needs a big push.

The WSJ piece by Giada Zampano quoted a member of parliament named Alessia Mosca who put it best: "We needed a shock to the system. The hope is that this will set off cultural change." 

(This article first appeared on CareerDiva.net.)

Time doesn’t help working women when it comes to the gender pay gap.

On average, women with college degrees or higher see their pay stop growing at about age 39, while men continue to see wage increases until they’re 48, according to a new report by PayScale, an online compensation data company.

That means the wage gap between women and men that begins in early in their careers gets bigger as they age. The PayScale data, which are based on compensation information from 1.6 million profiles submitted by users of the firm’s website, found that women make a median yearly salary of $31,900 at age 22, compared to $40,800 for men; and by their late 40s women are bringing in about $60,000 to the $95,000 average yearly wage men get.

“Male pay is higher, and grows higher and grows faster than female pay over time,” said Katie Bardaro, lead economist for PayScale.

But, she added, much of the discrepancy among the sample they reviewed came form the types of jobs women chose. Women are opting for lower-paying jobs, including everything from human resources to nursing, compared to male choices that are more often higher-paying occupations such as finance and engineering.

Other research has found similar patterns in pay over time, but some studies uncovered a pay difference even when such factors as types of jobs were accounted for.

Catherine Hill, research director of the American Association of University Women, said PayScale’s findings are somewhat limited because they don’t look at the entire population.

Hill’s research, looking at national government data, also shows a growing gap in pay as women grow older. When she compared apples to apples as far as career choices, the disparity remained, albeit smaller.

“We found a pay gap one year out of college among full-time workers where women earned 80 percent as much as their male peers just one year out of college,” she explained. “Then we analyzed all the things that impact earnings such as job choice, GPA, the school they went to, etc. When all’s the same there’s still a 5 percent gap.”

Fast forward ten years, she continued, and the women earn 69 percent as much as their male counterparts. And when the data was controlled for things such as having kids, or taking time out of the workforce, there still was a 12 percent gap in pay between men and women, she noted.

The issue pay gap issue is critical given the ongoing national debate and also pending legislation to address income inequality among men and women. The Paycheck Fairness Act, which failed to pass in 2010, was put to a vote on Thursday in the House and legislators decided not to consider the act. The Senate is expected to vote on the bill Tuesday. The bill would boost remedies for victims of pay bias and also mandate that employers justify pay differences.

“I think it can be very helpful,” Hill said, about legislation that would help close the gender pay gap. “The best employers are doing things they should when it comes to pay but it would be a reminder for all those other employers to catch up.”

There are many reasons for the gap, said Teresa Boyer, executive director of the Center for Women and Work at the School of Management and Labor Relations Rutgers.

“There is simple mathematics,” she said. “Even if you start behind just a little bit that exponentially grows. If you start out with a $1,000 pay difference, over time it can become tremendous, just like compounded interest but in reverse.”

Also, she said, when you look at women’s career trajectories, including things like promotions and positions in the corner offices, women tend to lag behind men.

And there is the issue of choices made when it comes to family obligations, she said, where some may take time off, or pare down careers after having children. But she stressed, “you can’t assume women are making these choices in a vacuum.”

Women often feel they are the only ones to take on responsibility and as a result make changes to their career ambitions because employers give them few options in terms of flexible schedules that could help them stay on the ladder of success.

She pointed to a report released by Pew Research Center in April that found 64 percent of women ages 18 to 34 said being successful and securing a good-paying job was very important or one of the most important things in their lives.

Women, she stressed, “have the desire to be successful and make money.”

Forbes Images

While asking general questions about age or religion aren't clear-cut under discrimination laws, queries about a person's disability are not allowed.

Are you pregnant? What religion are you? How old are you?

There are certain questions most of us don’t expect hiring managers to ask during a job interview because we think they’re too personal or even illegal.

But while such inquiries aren’t always legal no-nos, they can be hazardous.

Cynthia M. applied for a job at Florida insurer, and believed she was more than qualified for the position. But during the interview she was asked about her religion and probed about her marital status.

“I was asked point-blank if I attended church and ‘which one?’ ” said Cynthia, who didn’t want her full name used because she feared it would hurt her continued job search. She was also asked if she had a family. When she told the recruiter she had a daughter, the interviewer asked, “Is that all?”

“That particular interview was very brief and there was zero response to my carefully thought-out letter I sent after the interview as a follow-up,” she explained. “I guess he didn't like that I was a single parent.”

A reader on our Facebook page, Linda Och, wrote recently that during a phone interview for a job she was asked her birth date and age. “I never heard from the employer again. I feel it was the cause of my not hearing about a second interview,” she maintained.

“Is this not discrimination?” she asked.

While you can’t refuse to hire someone based on a characteristic that’s protected under the nation’s labor laws, including things like religion or age, questioning a job applicant about such things by itself isn’t going to get government discrimination defenders banging down any company doors.

What happens as far as hiring decisions after the questions are asked is what ends up getting employers in legal hot water.

“Pre-employment inquires about a person's race, sex or pregnancy, national origin, religion or age are not technically illegal under the laws we enforce as long as they are asked of all people,” said Justine Lisser, a spokeswoman and senior attorney for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission.

Dads, are you feeling pressure to do it all?

“Employment decisions made on those bases -- such as denying employment to all pregnant women, or everyone who isn't a Christian, are illegal, however,” she continued. “When investigating a charge of discrimination, the EEOC will look at these types of pre-employment inquiries as indications of discriminatory intent.”

Nigel Telman, an attorney with Proskauer, an employment law firm that represents employers, said questions related to protected categories such as age or religion may seem innocuous to some hiring managers but can end up causing problems down the line. “An applicant who didn’t get the job can allege they told the employer something about a protected characteristic,” he noted.

Indeed, if there turns out to be a pattern pointing to discrimination against a certain group or groups, such questions may become substantiation of illegal practices.

In the case of Texas Roadhouse, questions by hiring managers about age are part of anecdotal evidence in the age-discrimination case against the restaurant chain brought by the EEOC last year.

The EEOC case alleges that managers were instructed to hire younger job applicants, and that older unsuccessful applicants nationally were told: “There are younger people here who can grow with the company” and “You seem older to be applying for this job.”

Texas Roadhouse officials did not immediately return a telephone call requesting a comment.

While asking general questions about age or religion aren’t clear-cut under discrimination laws, queries about a person’s disability are not allowed.

Under the Americans with Disabilities Act, employers are prohibited pre-employment inquiries about an applicant’s disability, according to the EEOC.  

The agency states on its “pre-employment inquires” web page that:

• Employers generally cannot ask disability-related questions or require medical examinations until after an applicant has been given a conditional job offer. 
• Employers are permitted to ask limited questions about reasonable accommodation if they reasonably believe that the applicant may need accommodation because of an obvious or voluntarily disclosed disability, or where the applicant has disclosed a need for accommodation.

In addition, it’s illegal to ask questions about genetic information or family medical history under the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act, the EEOC’s Lisser pointed out.

And, she added, “It is also illegal for an employer to advertise for specific characteristics such as sex, age or race.” 

Given that personal questions could lead to claims of bias, you’d think employers would have abandoned the practice already.

“Some managers need a reminder that these questions are hazardous to the company,” said Richard Howard, an employment attorney with Meltzer Lippe. “Hiring managers should absolutely steer clear of questions regarding age, race, religion, pregnancy, and marital status.”

Has a hiring manager ever asked you an inappropriate question related to age, race, religion, pregnancy, health, or marital status? Share your story below. 

Brendan Mcdermid / Reuters

Lauren Odes and her attorney Gloria Allred (R) speak at a news conference in New York, May 21, 2012. Odes is suing her former employer, claiming she was dismissed for dressing too provocatively.

The website for a Manhattan lingerie boutique called Native Intimates has a photograph of a well-endowed woman pushing her breasts together. So, it’s odd that an employee of the shop is claiming she was fired for being “too hot.”

But that’s exactly what Lauren Odes is alleging.

“When I was first told that I was ‘too hot’ and that my breasts were too large I was shocked,” said Odes in a statement released Tuesday. Her sexy appearance, she said, got her a pink slip from an employer who sells intimate apparel much sexier than your basic slips.

Not surprisingly her story is getting a lot of media attention thanks in part to the celebrity lawyer representing her, Gloria Allred, who held a press conference Monday about the allegations. Allred has taken on many high profile and controversial discrimination cases in her day, including the case of a banker who claimed in 2010 she was fired for being too sexy.

In Odes’ case, however, the work environment would seem a bit more conducive to a little cleavage.

Odes began working for Native Intimates on April 24 handling data entry and shipping tasks, but by May 1 she was out of a job. She alleges her supervisors told her that her choice of clothing was disliked by the company’s owner, an Orthodox Jew.

In a statement, Allred said a complaint has been filed with the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission in New York claiming Odes “was simply fired for being attractive and for not conforming to the religious strictures imposed by top management, apparently for having female body parts, despite having ably performed her professional duties.”

A woman reached by phone at Native Intimates would only say: “We’re not interested in giving a comment.”

A spokeswoman for the EEOC would not comment on the complaint.

Odes is alleging two types of discrimination: one based on gender and another based on religion.

Being too hot is not a protected category under the nation’s labor laws, but being terminated because you’re a woman or for religious bias is a legal no-no.

It’s unclear exactly why Odes was fired, but what is clear is employers have a lot of latitude in restricting what their employees can wear.

“All companies, regardless of whether they’re selling lingerie or whatever, are permitted to have and enforce dress codes that an owner sees as appropriate,” said Keisha-Ann G. Gray, an employment attorney for Proskauer, a law firm that represents employers. “They are permitted to require their employee to dress conservatively,” she noted, if it’s applied equally among workers of different genders, religions, and races.

Odes said she asked about a dress code when she was hired. She said she was told to look around and see what everyone else was wearing. "The dress varied from very casual athletic wear to business dress,” she said.

She also claimed she was wearing “very covered up attire” but it was her body that was the target of her employer’s disdain. She said that at one point a female employee suggested that she consider taping down her breasts.

Women are often held to a double standard at work when it comes to their appearance, said Anne York, associate professor of economics at Meredith College’s School of Business in Raleigh, N.C.

While a supervisor may have thought she might turn off customers, she said, a well-endowed woman would seem like the perfect fit for a lingerie business. 

Shannon Stapleton / Reuters

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton speaks to students at Dhaka International School.

For women and their careers, it’s often not about what they do but how they look. More proof of that came last week.

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton made headlines around the world not for anything she did but because she appeared without makeup on a trip to Bangladesh.

“Hillary Clinton addresses ‘au naturale’ liberation,” said political blog The Drudge Report, while trend site Styleite.com declared that Clinton “just wants to be normal and do things like wear her hair in a scrunchie, party with her girlfriends and go out without a stitch of makeup.”

The kicker was England’s Daily Mail, which said Clinton’s moment sans makeup made her look “tired and withdrawn.”

Similarly former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks drew angry comments Friday not just for her role in a phone hacking scandal but for her appearance, especially her curly red hair, when she testified before a British government inquiry led by Lord Justice Leveson.

AFP/Getty Images

Former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks, testifies at the Leveson Inquiry.

Here are some of the popular Brooks tweets for the day:

• A date for your diary / Rebekah Brooks, at the inquiry / Hair and temperament, fiery / Words, liary
• Rebekah Brooks. We get it. You have lots of curly red hair, but wearing Orphan Annie's dress to the Leveson hearing? Seriously?

There’s even a Facebook page dedicated to Brooks' hair, called Rebekah Brook's hair is so big because it's full of secrets.

It goes to show that no matter how high up in business or politics a woman gets — or how hard she falls — in the end the focus is often about how she looks and not what she does.

“We’re still held to a double standard,” said Jennifer Siebel Newsom, who produced the 2011 documentary “Miss Representation” about the underrepresentation of women in powerful positions.

“It’s tragic,” she said. “We have an obsession with women’s looks. Unfortunately our culture has bought into this whole double standard that a women’s value is her beauty not her capacity to lead.”

The Look: Hillary Clinton doesn't care if you see her without makeup

Women certainly feel the pressure to look good. Nearly half of women don’t feel good about themselves unless they’re wearing makeup, according to a study released this year by the Renfrew Center Foundation, a nonprofit that focuses on eating disorder research and treatment.

The online study, conducted by Harris Interactive for Renfrew, polled nearly 1,300 adult women and found 44 percent "have negative feelings when they are not wearing makeup," including feeling self-conscious, unattractive or that something is missing. Only 3 percent said going without makeup made them feel more attractive.

“Wearing makeup to enhance one’s appearance is normal in our society and often a rite of passage for young women,” said Adrienne Ressler, national training director for Renfrew and a body image expert. “There is concern, however, when makeup no longer becomes a tool for enhancement but rather a security blanket that conceals negative feelings about one’s self-image and self-esteem.”

Many women trying to climb the ladder of success believe they need to enhance their looks or face career doom.

“This goes to the heart of what we still see in the work world today,” said Nancy Mellard, general counsel for business services company CBIZ, which offers a program to develop of women professionals through focused leadership, mentoring and networking. “Whether you’re coming up the career path or at the height of your career like Clinton, we still see women, certainly more than men, judged on appearance not accomplishments.”

While blatant discrimination in the workplace is less common than it was 20 years ago, she said, there are still subtle biases that may be hardest to combat.

TODAY Style: Kathie Lee, Hoda dare to bare (their faces)

One study sponsored by the Women’s Media Center and She Should Run, a group advocating for more women in public leadership, found that sexist comments about female candidates, including critiques on appearance, lead voters to question how effective they would be.

Often the people bashing how women look are other women. “We’re some of the worst,” Mellard said.

Newsom agreed. “It speaks to our own insecurities. We are complicit and have also bought into this, and the only way to change things is for women to start seeing each other more as sisters and supporting, not judging each other.”

Judging each other based on looks, however, is a reality we all have to face because there’s a "beauty benefit" for men as well as women in the workplace.

“Research by economists has shown that ‘beautiful people’, both men and women, have higher pay than less attractive people, holding constant many other factors about the individuals,” said Anne York, associate professor of economics at Meredith College’s School of Business. “So it really does pay for everyone to look good for work.”

“In the case of Hillary Clinton, though, it was quite ridiculous to me that when she went with a natural face, which millions of men do every day, that it made the news with close-up photos of her face," she added. " While her appearance made a lot of news, I don’t think that is necessarily bad if it can start a conversation on accepting more women with a natural appearance.”

Of course, men can fall victim to image-bashing as well.

Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s hoodie has been a hot topic on social media lately. But unlike attacks on Clinton’s face or Brooks’ hair, there’s little fear hoodiegate will undermine the main power base in the business world today – rich white guys.

Related:

Have you and your spouse ever competed for the same job? 

Facebook IPO pits Wall Street suits against the hoodie

Mike Segar / Reuters

Facebook Chief Operating Officer Sheryl Sandberg delivers a keynote address at a Facebook's marketing event in February 2012.

IBM recently named Virginia Rometty as its the first female CEO, and Facebook’s COO Sheryl Sandberg is on her way to becoming one of the richest women in technology when the company goes public.

But despite these noteworthy feats by these female leaders, the number of women chief information officers at U.S. corporations has declined for the second year in a row. It hit less than 10 percent this year, and about one-third of CIOs report they have no women in management positions working for them, according to a survey released Monday by Harvey Nash, a recruiting firm.

“There’s an overall skill set shortage in U.S., across men and women, as far as the IT space,” said Anna Frazzetto, Senior Vice President of Technology Solutions, Harvey Nash USA. But, she added, this has become even more pronounced among women, creating a growing underrepresentation problem for women in technology.

A number of factors are contributing to the dearth of women, she said, including that the industry isn’t thought of as the most social or exciting out there, and that not enough young women are choosing to study technology when they go to college.

Discrimination and preconceived notions about women’s commitment to their jobs also is contributing to the problem, she added.

The lack-of-women dilemma isn’t just a corner office issue. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, women comprised only 25 percent of all computer-related occupations last year, pointed out Jenny Slade, a spokeswoman for the National Center for Women & Information Technology. Women represented about 25 percent of computer and information systems managers; 38.6 percent of web developers, and 19 percent of software developers. 

Have you and your spouse ever competed for the same job?

In 2011, women made up only about 18 percent of those getting bachelor's degrees in computer and information sciences, a percentage that's held steady for the past four years, she said.

“Unconscious bias” against women in IT is a big problem, she said, and “women don’t always know what the trajectory is to obtain a leadership role.”

A study done by the Center in 2010 found that “56 percent of women in technology leave their employers at the mid-level point in their careers.”

There are a number of factors causing women to leave, said Slade, but the top reasons were bad relationships with supervisors; feeling they were not on the fast track to promotion; feeling they don’t get credit for their work and a hostile work environment.

One women who made it to the top of the IT biz is Patricia Andersen CIO at Apartments.com. She said she was lucky to have worked for companies in her career, including Waste Management, that didn’t discriminate against women when it came to women and technology roles.

“I really haven’t worked at a place where gender was an issue in moving up,” she explained.

Apartments.com, she added, is looking to get even more women in management and one focus of the strategy will be mentoring.

“I’ve had several mentors through my life,” she noted. The mentors helped her learn one of the most important skills you need when it comes to climbing the ladder of success, she said, “how to handle political situations.” 

Women are often told if they want power they have to speak up. So you’d think women leaders are chatting up a storm in boardrooms and in the halls of Congress.

Think again.

New research finds that even among women who hold powerful positions in government and business, they’re not making their voices heard as much as their powerful male counterparts, and for good reason.

“When women get power, talking a lot is seen negatively by other people,” said Victoria Brescoll, assistant professor of organizational behavior at the Yale School of Management. “They’re seen as domineering and controlling.”

Courtesy Yale University

Victoria Brescoll

Brescoll’s study of leaders and their vocalizing is titled “Who Takes the Floor and Why: Gender, Power, and Volubility in Organizations” and was published in the current issue of Administrative Science Quarterly.

In doing her research, Brescoll studied data from the U.S. Senate floor where the words spoken by all senators are recorded. She found that the most powerful male senators talked much more than powerful female senators.

In the study, she surmised that the difference could be a function of different genders having different ways of establishing rapport, “or because women are concerned about the potential backlash stemming from appearing to talk too much.”

The idea that women would be treated negatively if they did blab too much was supported by Brescoll’s additional research, where she had subjects rate hypothetical CEOs and politicians she created for research.

The women leaders who talked too much, according to the study, were rated as “significantly less competent and less suitable for leadership than a male CEO who was reported as speaking for the same amount.”

And both male and female participants in the study held this perception.

So should women leaders just shut up? No way, according to Brescoll.

“Women don’t do things because they anticipate a backlash, but that just reinforces stereotypes and becomes a collective action problem,” she stressed. If women don’t all join voices and start chattering away, she added, “then the stereotype will persist and we’ll continue to have this double standard at work.”

Time to start bending some ears, gals!