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.”

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.” 

The number of women looking to attend business school hit a record high last year, but that doesn’t mean they’ll find an equitable workplace when they get out.

Women last year accounted for 41 percent of the 258,192 people taking the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, which is a requirement for most MBA programs. That represents the sixth consecutive year of growth in women taking the test, the Graduate Management Admissions Council said this week. The number of men taking the exam fell for a third year in a row to 151,392.

In the United States, 39 percent of test takers were women, but in east Asia, women led the way. In China 64 percent of test takers were women. Overall about 117,000 test takers were Americans, compared with about 58,000 who were from east and southwast Asia.

In the United States “we’re not seeing the women in business schools that would be expected,” given that women now make up half the U.S. workforce, said Michelle Sparkman Renz, director of research for the council. It’s unclear why more women aren’t flocking to U.S. business schools, but clearly the corporate world has yet to embrace women in management. 

Female MBAs who graduated from 2000 to 2011 and are working full-time made only 81 percent of what their male counterparts are making, according to the council's research.

The gap may be narrowing for younger MBAs, the council found. For the class of 2011, ages 28 to 34, MBA graduates closed the gap in consulting, manufacturing and technology.

Not that women overseas are thrilled with the opportunities they find. The report surveyed alumni of international business school classes from 2000 to 2011 and found only 54 percent of the women polled said there were equal opportunities in the workplace, compared with 85 percent of men who thought so.

The report should be a "a call to action" for the U.S. government and U.S. companies, said Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of the Forte Foundation, an advocacy group for women in leadership. Emerging markets such as China, she said, are encouraging women to become business leaders, and the United States could be left behind. In this country, she added, we should also be saying, "let's educate women in business and let's have them become leaders." 

Women held only about 16 percent of board seats and 14 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies last year, according to a study by Catalyst, a research firm.

The number of pregnancy discrimination charges increased about 15 percent in the last 10 years to 5,797 last year.

It’s hard to imagine we still have to tell employers this today, but here goes: Pregnancy discrimination is illegal.

While it may sound obvious to some, blatant pregnancy bias is still alive and well in the workplace. A pregnant woman who applied for a job at a Subway franchise in Phoenix was told by a manager “we can’t hire you because you’re pregnant.” Last month, she won punitive damages against the employer.

It’s just one example of the types of flagrant pregnancy discrimination that the federal government is trying to stop.

“A few employers have forgotten, or never learned, that it’s against the law to discriminate against women because of pregnancy,” David Lopez, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission's general counsel, said during a public meeting before the EEOC commissioners Wednesday.

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.

While the EEOC is doing outreach to employers so they understand the law, the agency is also using the big-stick approach.

The EEOC has increased the number of cases it has filed against employers when it comes to pregnancy bias, Lopez said, reaching 20 cases last year, inching up from 19 in 2010.

He pointed to a $1.64 million settlement reached with Akal Security Inc., the largest provider of contract security services to the federal government, in 2010. The agency claimed Akal had a national policy “of forcing its pregnant employees, working as contract security guards on U.S. Army bases, to take leave and discharging them because of pregnancy.”

Such conduct, the agency maintained, violated the Pregnancy Discrimination Act, which prohibits gender discrimination in employment, including pregnancy discrimination.

This type of bias can hit low-wage workingwomen the hardest, said Sharon Terman, senior staff attorney in the gender equity program at The Legal Aid Society Employment Law Center, who spoke at the EEOC event.

“We’ve heard from many women who were fired immediately upon announcing their pregnancy and whose employers explicitly told them the pregnancy was the reason,” she explained.

Low-income women who become pregnant, she continued, are routinely denied minor workplace accommodations that would help them continue working. A common example of accommodations would be allowing a worker to sit on a stool instead of standing all day, or letting her carry a water bottle.

She offered one case of a pregnant janitor who was fired via text message by her boss after she told him her obstetrician was late for her appointment.

Many poorer workers also don’t have paid sick days, she pointed out. The United States is one of the only industrialized nations that does not mandate paid sick days for employees. While some states have passed laws requiring some paid sick time, the majority of workers nationally are not covered by such legislation.

Although many employers have anti-discrimination policies, it still occurs. Employment attorney Sara Begley said, “Unenlightened managers who are simply focused on getting the job done may violate a pregnant employee's protected rights by taking adverse action for taking maternity leave, not provide salary increases or bonuses to employees on leave, assume an employee will not return post leave and transfer her duties to another employee, assume an employee will be on Mommy Track post maternity leave."

Such outdated assumptions, she added, “can and must be remedied by training and enforcement of applicable policies."

The biggest “knowledge gap” when it comes to the law, she added, appears to be with smaller firms who just don’t have adequate training.  

While reaching out and educating employers is important, said EEOC Commissioner Stuart Ishimaru, he shared his frustration that so little has changed in the 35 years since the Pregnancy Discrimination Act was passed.

“Why have we missed the boat?” he asked the panelists assembled at the hearing. Why, he added, does pregnancy bias persist? “It’s a puzzle to me.”

Judy Lichtman, senior advisor to the National Partnership for Women and Families, who spoke at the hearing, said it was all about long-standing stereotypes, and not just regarding pregnancy but for caregiving too. Our society doesn’t value people with family responsibilities, she said. “What are our real obligations to change an engrained paradigm?” 

Icon Films, Getty Images file

Smart wardrobe? Former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, played by Meryl Streep in the newly released film; British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

A new U.K. survey suggests women are taking a decidedly Thatcher-esque tack in order to be taken more seriously in the workplace.

The study, performed by a British office-space company called Business Environment, found that 48 percent of women are willing to lower the tone of their voice (and 23% are lowering their hemlines) to climb the career ladder.

The lady who perfected this strategy? None other than strong-willed former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, subject of the new film, "The Iron Lady," who took lessons to make her voice lower and was a huge fan of below-the-knee skirts on the job.

In November, the BBC reported on a study that found that participants equated lower voices with good leadership qualities. And skipping miniskirts at work can't hurt.

It does seem however, that women do recognize the value of well-placed femininity, with nearly 65 percent confessing that they wear more makeup at the office.

What do you think? Does conservative dress mean workplace success?

Rachel Elbaum is a London-based writer who would happily wear Maggie T.'s signature pearls.

More: Study: Skirts favored over pantsuits in the workplace 
Which stars boast the most influential haircuts of 2011? 

Martin Barraud / Getty Images/OJO Images

By Eve Tahmincioglu

Women, it seems, still can’t get a leadership break.

For years now, the number of women in positions of power in corporate America has been stagnant, with gals unable to break 20 percent of the executive officer positions or corporate board seats.

If you read the career advice out there you’d think it’s all the fault of women themselves and not the entrenched gender bias in the workplace.

The thinking is that women don’t want it enough. They’re not doing the right things to get to the top. They’re slowing down their career to raise families.

Turns out, this may be nothing more than corporate mythology.

A study by research firm Catalyst has found that women with MBAs who are considered high potential are using all the right career strategies to get ahead, but the pay and promotion gap still exists. Conventional wisdom that says women are failing to negotiate  for themselves, opting out, or putting the skids on careers for family are all bunk, according to the findings.

“It’s really time for organizations to stop assuming that these myths are true and look at what’s going on in terms of their talent management systems,” said Christine Silva, senior director of research for Catalyst.

The report -- which studied more than 3,000 male and female MBAs who stayed on a “traditional” career path and were working full time -- broke down the participants into four strategy profiles:

• “Climbers,” who are actively seeking to advance in a company.
• “Hedgers,” who are looking for advancement inside and outside their existing employers.
• “Scanners,” who are looking for future prospects in the job market.
• “Coasters,” who are not actively using career-enhancing tactics.

It found that male hedgers got the biggest advancement rewards for their efforts -- twice as much as female hedgers.

Compared to other men, male hedgers had advanced furthest, getting more of a payoff for employing both internally and externally focused advancement strategies, followed by male climbers, coasters and scanners.

For women it was a different story.

Not only did they lag male hedgers in advancement, there was no difference among female hedgers, climbers or scanners. While women in the hedgers group did advance further than coasters -- women doing comparatively less to get ahead -- being proactive didn’t provide as great an advantage for women hedgers as it did for male hedgers.

Here’s an overview of the four realities women face when it comes to advancement, according to the study:

1. Doing All the Right Things Does Not Level the Playing Field for Women
Among much of career advancement advice out there, the employee who is seen as having the most potential to advance into the leadership ranks typically has certain characteristics, according to Catalyst researchers, including everything from actively seeking high-profile assignments to learning the political landscape or unwritten rules of an company.

Unfortunately, such traits don’t help women as much as men.

The study found that:

“Men benefited more than women when they adopted the proactive strategies of the proverbial ideal worker. Even when women used the same career advancement strategies -- doing all the things they have been told will help them get ahead -- they advanced less than their male counterparts and had slower pay growth.”

While career strategies didn’t benefit women as much as men, the tactics that were among the most effective career strategies for women overall, said Silva, were:

• Making their achievements known.
• Getting access to powerful and influential others.

2. Women Are Not Seeking Slower Tracks

The researchers looked at women and men who aspired to get to the top of organizations and found there was no evidence women were seeking slower tracks than men. They found overall that women were less satisfied with their career trajectory and compensation, and that these women were not intentionally slowing down their careers but wanting more.

The study found:

• Even among the most and least proactive, men were more satisfied with their advancement than were women.
• Women were also less satisfied than men with their salary and rate of compensation growth. This holds when comparing women and male hedgers, scanners, and coasters.

The findings suggest, the authors surmised, that “women likely were not seeking out lower-paying career tracks and, therefore, accepting of and satisfied with their lower compensation. Rather, they likely were less satisfied with their salary and compensation growth when they compared themselves to others in their field and at their level.”

3. Men Are Paid for Potential While Women are Paid for (Proven) Performance

It’s often thought that leaving one employer for another will help accelerate pay, but this doesn’t seem to hold true for women, according to the data.

Men who left their employer say their compensation grew more than men who stayed with the company they first joined after getting their MBAs.

On average, men who were at their second post-MBA employer earned $13,743 more by 2008 than those who stayed with their first-post MBA employer.

But for women there was no difference in compensation growth between women who left their jobs and those who stayed. Among women job-hoppers, compensation growth was $53,472 less than for women who were still with their first employer. Silva said this is evidence that men are generally paid for their potential, but women have to prove they can do the job.

4. Women Do Ask, But Asking Doesn’t Close the Gap

There was little difference in the negotiating habits of men and women in the study, with 47 percent of women and 52 percent of men reporting they had asked for more money during the hiring process.

The overarching message of the research, said Silva, is “organizations have a responsibility to figure out where unintentional biases exist.”

While everyone is focused on the glass ceiling phenomenon, she continued, few realize how disparities in pay and rank among men and women when they’re in lower level positions ends up dooming many women later in their careers because they may never catch up.

Another issue is women themselves. Many may not realize they face discrimination and as a result may not be fighting for equal opportunities, according to another recently released study by the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University titled “Opting Out or Denying Discrimination? How the Framework of Free Choice in American Society Influences Perceptions of Gender Inequality.”

Nicole Stephens, assistant professor of management and organizations at Kellogg who co-authored the report, said women have the choice today to either stay in the workforce or opt out for personal reasons, and that choice may be lulling them into a false sense of career equity.

“But were their choices really desirable?” she asked.

That in turn perpetuates a male model in the workplace, she maintained, and the assumption that one person, the man, is going to be the breadwinner and the woman typically has one foot heading out the door. That mentality, she stressed, is what often leads to the pay and advancement inequality.

“By calling something a choice,” she added. “It makes people think there really isn’t a problem here that needs to be fixed.”

Single women over the age of 60 are facing retirement, increasingly uncertain about their financial future. Some even say they can no longer afford to retire. NBC's Chris Jansing has more.

If you want to make a team smarter, just add women -- that’s the key finding of new research by management professors Anita Woolley and Thomas Malone.

This month’s edition of Harvard Business Review (HBR) reports on a study by the two academics who aimed to find a reliable measurement of group intelligence.

Woolley and Malone randomly assembled 18 to 60-year-olds into teams and had them solve a complex problem. After team members brainstormed, made decisions and completed visual puzzles, they were given an intelligence score based on their performance.

The study’s findings showed that the difference between low scoring and high scoring teams had nothing to do with an individual's intelligence, but rather with an individual's gender.

“It’s a preliminary finding -- and not a conventional one,” Malone, who is the founding director of the MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, told HBR. “The standard argument is that diversity is good and you should have both men and women in a group. But so far, the data show, the more women, the better.”

While researchers have replicated their findings twice, another researcher who worked on the project was hesitant to flat out say that groups of women are smarter than men.

“It’s not that I don’t trust the data. I do,” Woolley, who is a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, told HBR. “It’s just that part of that finding can be explained by differences in social sensitivity, which we found is also important to group performance.”

She said studies have shown that women tend to score higher on tests of social sensitivity than men do, so what's really important is to have people who are high in social sensitivity, whether they are men or women.

Researchers also defined what makes a group intelligent: listening to one another, sharing constructive criticism and having open minds.

"And in our study we saw pretty clearly that groups that had smart people dominating the conversation were not very intelligent groups," Woolley said.

While it can be difficult to significantly change an individual's intelligence, it's possible to change a group's intelligence by changing members or incentives for collaboration, Malone told HBR. He hopes that as they continue their research, they will begin to unlock the secret of how to increase the collective intelligence of companies, countries or the whole world.

Until then, you may want to make sure you have more women, or more “socially sensitive people,” on your team.