If you spend time worrying that you'll end up on the street in your old age with your belongings stuffed into plastic bags in a shopping cart, you have good company.

A new survey shows that almost half of American women fear they will become "bag ladies" some day, and the anxiety ripples across all income groups.

Even among women with household earnings above $200,000, 27 percent harbor the bag-lady fear, according to a new online survey issued by Allianz Life Insurance Company of North America.

While Allianz is promoting the survey to encourage women to seek more financial-planning advice, the underlying concern is valid, according to a labor economist who studies aging and income issues.

Because women typically earn less and have more sporadic work histories, their pensions and benefits are less sturdy, said Barbara Butrica, a senior research associate at the Urban Institute’s Income and Benefits Policy Center. “They are starting retirement at a disadvantage,” she said.

Women also tend to live longer than men. “So she’ll have to make that income last a lot longer time,” Butrica said.

Among the over-65 set, non-married women have the highest poverty rates. While only 4 percent of married women over 65 fell below the poverty line in 2010, that number rose to 14 percent for widows over 65 and 18 percent for divorced women over 65, Butrica said.

For men over 65 living in poverty, 4 percent were married; 11 percent were widowers and 12 percent were divorced. The gender differences are even more striking, Butrica said, when you consider that in 2010, only 29.5 percent of men age 65 or older were not married, compared with 56.3 percent of women. Those numbers come from the Social Security Administration's 2012 report on “Income of the Population 55 or Older, 2010.”

But should even women with very good jobs fret about being homeless one day?

“It’s highly unlikely. But it could happen,” Butrica said, citing the likelihood that a catastrophic illness is more likely to strike as you get older. “The fact that these women are thinking about it is a good thing.”

And indeed more women are planning for retirement, especially since the financial crisis of 2008-2009, according to the Allianz survey.

More than 90 percent of the women who responded to the survey said women need to be more involved in financial planning. The strongest agreement, 96 percent, came from divorced women.

Overall, 57 percent of the respondents said they both "have more earning power than ever before" and 60 percent said they are the primary breadwinner in their household

The Women, Money & Power Study was conducted by Larson Research + Strategy in December 2012 as an opt-in, online survey with 2,213 women, ages 25 through 75, with an annual household income of at least $30,000. The numbers are representative of the U.S. female population based on age and geographic distribution and are weighted to reflect the most recent and accurate available U.S. Census proportions.

Photo courtesy of Alcoa

Janne Sigurdsson, managing director of the Fjardaal smelter in Iceland, says that women need to be encouraged to apply for promotions, because they often don't believe they are qualified.

NEW YORK – Many companies pay lip service to workplace diversity, but few go as far as Coca-Cola, which aims to reach gender parity across all levels of its business by 2020.

“It makes pure, good business sense,” Coca-Cola Chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent said Tuesday when discussing his initiative, launched in 2008.

Coca-Cola Co., Alcoa Inc. and Unilever on Tuesday were presented Catalyst Awards for their global diversity strategies. The awards event, held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, focused on how other companies can get there too.

“This is hard work. It doesn’t just happen because you want it to,” Kent said. Under Coke’s Global Women’s Initiative, senior-level positions held by women have increased to nearly 30 percent globally from 23 percent, according to the company’s records. Coke’s initiative extends beyond its doors to empower and train women in their communities.

The Coca-Cola plan was triggered by company research that indicated that, globally, women make more than 70 percent of purchasing decisions related to its products.

Implementing the plan, the company set milestones, benchmarks and accountability for the managers. One way to provide clarity for managers, Kent said, is to make it a core goal that impacts pay. “You start shaping your compensation around success in this program,” Kent said. “When you talk about it in those terms, it really resonates.”

“We also made sure everybody understood the business case for it,” said Kathy Waller, Coca-Cola vice president, controller and chair of the company’s Women’s Leadership Council. 

Alcoa, the world’s leading aluminum producer, between 2008 and 2012 increased its female representation to 19 percent from 16 percent among executives, and to 25 percent from 22 percent for professional and plant manager roles. Those percentages increased even as the company cut its global workforce by 30 percent.

“It’s an obvious business imperative if you want to outperform your competition, you have to bring in women,” said Glen Morrison, president of Alcoa Building and Construction Systems.

Alcoa officials said they use outreach efforts and 10-percent bonuses, among other measures, for managers who meet diversity requirements to encourage women to join and stay at the company.

Morrison said it’s critical for companies to create an environment where women can return after having children. “Otherwise you’re grooming this great talent and you’re letting it out of the workplace,” Morrison said.

Janne Sigurdsson is an Alcoa success story. Hired seven years ago as the IT manager for a smelting plant in Iceland, she’s now running the smelter, which is Alcoa’s lowest-cost and most efficient.

At her remote Iceland plant, 33 percent of the managers are women; overall, 22 percent of the workers are women. The goal for the plant is 50 percent. “It’s a tough goal,” Sigurdsson said.

“You need to do something extra,” she said when asked how to hire and retain women.

Sometimes it means sending promising employees back to school, or, as was her case,  doling out encouragement to apply for a promotion.

“I’m not sure I would have applied,” Sigurdsson said of one of her five job changes at the plant. “I was not sure I was ready.”

While she’s not always on the smelter floor, even office staff is trained to do dirty work when the power goes out at the plant, which operates 24/7. “I can change the anodes. I can do pot-tending. I can do that when we have a crisis,” Sigurdsson said.

The Catalyst Awards were launched 1987 by the non-profit Catalyst group, which seeks to expand opportunities for women and business.

Tara Sophia Mohr is the founder of the Playing Big leadership program for women. Her "Women’s School to Work Guide" shows women how to shake up their good student habits to begin playing bigger at work. Here’s an excerpt:

In my work helping women build successful, fulfilling careers, I started to see something quite interesting: women who had been high achievers in school were finding that the very skills that served them well in school were holding them back in their careers.

Success at work demands different competencies than success at school, and many women aren’t aware that they need to shift their approach.

Below are five new skills women need in the workplace — skills that tend to be the very opposite of what we learned in school.  

1. Influence authority. In school, each class brought a new authority figure — the teacher — who had unique rules, requirements and preferences. As students, we get really good at figuring out what each authority figure wants and to provide it. Yet to have brilliant careers, we must learn to not only please the authority figures — but to challenge and influence too. Today, when you hold a different view than the authority figure in your midst, see how you can influence him or her by diplomatically sharing your point of view.
2. Improvise. In school, we learn how to prepare: how to study for the test, to do the reading the night before, to be ready with the answer when the teacher asks for it in class. This can lead us to feel confident only when we’ve had a lot of time to prepare. Yet brilliant careers require that we think on our feet again and again. Get as good at improvisation as you are at preparation. Today, embrace an opportunity to improvise at work.
3. Get uncomfortable. In school, you probably got comfortable with the routine of studying, test-taking, paper writing, without having to take too many risks along the way to succeed. In our careers, we have to get comfortable with risk-taking, with feeling afraid and moving forward anyway, with leaving our comfort zones. Today, take one action that stretches you out of your comfort zone and that will help you realize your professional dreams.
4. Self-promote. In school, if you did good work, you usually got a good grade, but in our careers, we’ve got to do good work and make sure people know about it. This can be an uncomfortable stretch for women, because we don’t want to come off as arrogant or as taking credit away from others. Today, find one opportunity to graciously let others know about one of your recent successes.
5. Look inward. School taught you how to absorb external information (from a book or a teacher’s lesson) and then regurgitate that information back out. As you move to more senior levels in your career, you’ll need to turn your focus inward and learn to trust what you already know. Today, notice when you default to looking outward for the answers, and turn inward to see where your thoughts lead you instead.

Want more? Go to www.taramohr.com/gettheguide to download Tara's free "Women's School to Work Guide."

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• Study predicts billion-woman surge in workplace
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With 1 billion females expected to enter the work force in the next decade, women are gaining ever greater influence in offices around the world.

They say it is a man’s world, but perhaps not for much longer as up to 1 billion women are expected to enter the work force in the next decade, according to the latest survey from Booz & Company on women in the workplace.

The report from the global management and strategy consultancy says the surge in women employees, employers, producers and entrepreneurs in the next 10 years would improve not only gender equality, but global economic growth. However, it also warns that governments could miss out on this potential.

CNBC.com: Biggest businesses run by women

 “As the world economy grows and develops, countries cannot afford to ignore over 50 percent of their talent pool,” Penney Frohling, business strategist and partner at Booz & Company, told CNBC. “There is a view that countries that are able to tap into that talent pool are going to see higher growth. There is a very clear correlation between empowering women and GDP growth, literacy rates, infant mortality rates.”

 She added: “(Any) countries that don’t tap into that are going to fall further and further behind.” 

Booz & Company created an index that ranks 128 countries based on how effectively leaders are empowering women as economic agents, looking at factors such as access to education, market participation and anti-discrimination policies — such as those introduced by Norway that require at least 40 percent of board members in publicly listed companies to be women.

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Frohling told CNBC Europe’s “Squawk Box” today that such policies are an “emotive issue.”

“When you see a [government] quota, you are looking at a long history of not achieving any progress in key performance indicators,” she said. “A quota is never a starting point — it’s a point where people feel there is a need for a catalyst.”

CNBC.com: Romney leads among women (as long as they’re wealthy)

Though some countries have introduced policies of positive discrimination to ensure that women are reaching the highest rung of the ladder, there are flaws in the policy. The British government said that by 2015 at least 25 percent of company boards should be made up of women, yet there is a long way to go, Frohling said.

“In the U.K., there is a statistic that (shows) that out of 950 'C-suite'-level positions (corporate executives), 70 of them are occupied by women. We simply are not making progress as quickly as we could,” she said.

Child care is also a big issue for women in their career progression, as is gender equality in the workplace, Frohling said, with the U.S. making an “interesting” statistic.

CNBC.com: How to mobilize the female work force

"In the U.S … there are women living hand-to-mouth in low-waged jobs, and 41 percent of their salaries are taken over by child care costs — so there’s really no way of getting ahead when you’re facing those kind of (obstacles),” she said.

Despite calls from the International Monetary Fund and the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development for governments to invest in women, there are still many boundaries to women progressing in the developing world’s labor force.

Alluding to the high-profile Taliban shooting of teenager Malala Yousafzai in Pakistan after the 14-year old campaigned for female education, Frohling said that basic rights such as access to property and education were key in female empowerment.

"It starts with education and access to education,” Frohling said. “You need a basic infrastructure in place … Once you have that infrastructure in place to get women into the work force.”

Larry Busacca / Getty Images file

Anne-Marie Slaughter has some advice for critics of her controversial magazine piece, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All": Get over it.

When Anne-Marie Slaughter wrote her now infamous The Atlantic article titled “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” she wasn’t naive about how the piece might stir women up.

She wanted to question the status quo, and possibly help inspire change.

But for everyone out there who may have interpreted her article as a narrative meant to inspire women to give up their careers for motherhood, she says those people are wrong.

And for those who thought she damaged the women’s movement’s progress in leveling the workplace playing field, she says, get over it.

It’s time to move beyond the tired Mommy Wars and the notion that women should be afraid to point out the flaws in the U.S. workplace for fear of rocking the boat. It’s time to “make work choices in a different way” and not condemn women, or men, who want flexibility at work, said Slaughter during Families and Work Institute’s Immersion Learning Experience session held last month at the New York headquarters of JPMorgan Chase.

“I would never choose family over my work. I would make them work together,” she said.

The institute honored Slaughter on Sept. 19 with the Work Life Legacy Award, in part because of the national conversation her magazine story ignited.

She is a professor of politics and international affairs at Princeton University who left her job last year as director of policy planning in the State Department in part to spend more time with her family.

The idea to write The Atlantic piece sprang from her realization of how far the workplace still had to go when it came to accommodating employees who want to have a good family life.

“What changed was actually my own calculation about what was needed,” she explained. “My kids needed me, but more importantly (was the question of) what I wanted.”

She realized her sons would be home for only a few more years but she knew she didn’t want to stop working. The ultimate goal, she explained, was to “work in a way that will allow me to have that time with them.”

“Something changed with me,” she noted. When women, especially younger women and her students, used to ask her about how to have it all when family responsibilities beckoned, “I had always said, ‘well you know, you just make it work.'’”

She came to realize, she said, what so many other working parents had already figured out. Sometimes You have to rethink what you’re doing in terms of your career.

Women, and even men, who say they’re leaving a job because of family are often viewed with scorn, she said. She admitted that she too was guilty of this in the past.

“Leaving to spend time with family is a euphemism for getting fired,” she continued, indicating this is especially true for men.

Slaughter wondered why we don’t hold up commitment to family the way we hold up commitment to fellow soldiers in the military. “We glorify ‘Band of Brothers’ but if you say, ‘I can’t stay in this job because of my commitment to those I love’ it’s viewed differently. In so many ways caring for family is not OK.”

“I value people who value those they are closest to,” she said.

So just in case you were wondering, Slaughter stressed, “I believe you can do it all.”

However, she’s come to the conclusion that it’s not “just a matter of individual commitment” when it comes to making it all work.

If we don’t change “the work environment” in the United States, or the arc of what makes a “successful-career environment,” she stressed, “some women will make it, but for every one else we actually need change.”

Eve Tahmincioglu, director of communications for the Families and Work Institute, blogs about family and work issues at  familiesandwork.org/blog.

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When attending meetings, women need to speak up more, a new study claims.

Women may be showing up for meetings, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re speaking up at those meetings.

In a recent study, researchers at Brigham Young University and Princeton University found that in a typical meeting where decisions get made, women are clamming up, speaking 25 percent less than their male counterparts.

The study, published in the American Political Science Review, found that when women find themselves in the minority they tend to keep their thoughts to themselves. Interestingly, when a guy is the token male in a group, he isn't at all likely to find himself tongue-tied.

While the decision to remain silent can be good if you’re ever arrested, if you’re hoping to be recognized as a leader, keeping your mouth shut is not such a smart choice. The study found that group members who had a lot to say were more likely to be seen as influential. So it comes as no surprise that with women talking less, fewer women were recognized as leaders.

“In school boards, governing boards of organizations and firms, and legislative committees, women are often a minority of members, and the group uses majority rule to make its decisions,” said study co-author Tali Mendelberg of Princeton. “These settings will produce a dramatic inequality in women’s floor time and in many other ways. Women are less likely to be viewed and to view themselves as influential in the group and to feel that their ‘voice is heard.’”

Although women often freeze up in meetings where they’re in the minority and the group needs to arrive at a majority-rules decision, there are situations where women will open up and share their thoughts.  Once women form the majority of the group, they’ll really start talking and will be more likely to assume leadership roles. Also, if a group has to arrive at a unanimous decision, women are again more likely to speak up.  When a group has to reach a unanimous decision, women recognize that every vote is equally important, prompting them to feel the need to contribute something to the overall effort and discussion.

The study’s researchers noted that women not only flourished when the group had to build consensus, but discussions began to take a different tone as well. When women took more active roles, the whole vibe of the group changed. The researchers found those groups to be more positive, more inclusive and have fewer negative interruptions than the male-dominated discussion.

“Women have something unique and important to add to the group, and that’s being lost, at least under some circumstances,” said Chris Karpowitz, the study’s co-author and an assistant professor at BYU.

The study focused on 94 groups made up of five individuals each. Group members were asked to perform “work” tasks to earn hypothetical amounts of money. Each individual was told they would take home earnings based on both performance and the group’s decision about how to redistribute the money earned as a whole. The groups were told to distribute the money in the “most just” way. On average, groups deliberated for 25 minutes, even though they were only required to deliberate the distribution system for five minutes. Participants voted by secret ballot, but half of the groups followed majority rule while the other half decided only with a unanimous vote.

Not only did the tone of the discussions change when women participated more, but the substance of the discussions shifted as well. When given the task of setting a group’s minimum wage, women tended to include discussions of family need and issues of care in the discussions. Researchers noted that women were more likely to ask questions like, “How does this affect a family?” or “How would a single woman do this?” And, what they were saying wasn’t just girl talk; girl action took place as well. Groups with a majority of women and groups led by consensus building were more generous with their reallocation of money.

“When women are silent, they’re not just silent and someone else is making the argument they would have made anyway,” Karpowitz said, recognizing the loss of ideas when women fail to give their input.

Dana Macario is a Seattle-area writer.

For many women, having it all is less of a choice and more of a necessity. Bills need to get paid, kids need to be mothered and dirty clothes need to be cleaned. The weak economy may have even made things even worse: Government data shows that more married women are even becoming primary breadwinners.

While women may be working more and perhaps even earning more than the men in their lives, chances are a lot of the responsibilities of home still fall on their shoulders. Forget balance; many women are simply striving for work-life survival. Luckily, in this technological age, there are many technological solutions available to help a working gal have it all without completely losing it.

Outsource it

From cleaning the house to picking up the dry cleaning, there are a lot of mundane chores that need to get done. While you’d have to be a 1 percenter to outsource all those pesky tasks, you still may be able to unload a few time-consuming chores from your plate.

But why not pretend like you’re a 1 percenter and get yourself a personal assistant, if only on an occasional basis? Websites like DoMyStuff.com, GetFriday.com and AskSunday.com might be able to get you the help you need.

DoMyStuff.com allows you to post jobs you need done, whether it’s picking up supplies for your daughter’s birthday party or finishing a project around the house. People bid on the job, you review the applicants, pick a winner and off you go. GetFriday.com and AskSunday.com are truly outsourcing -– to India. GetFriday.com offers you a virtual assistant for $15 an hour plus a $10 per month fee. AskSunday.com’s basic plan gets you 10 hours of assistance per month for $119. People have used these services for everything from planning weddings and vacations to researching work projects.

If a personal assistant from India feels too foreign for you, you can always turn to the web to find help outsourcing other tasks and jobs. Sites like SitterCity.com offer access to babysitters. Find a dog walker or housekeeper on craigslist.org.

Get organized

Those niggling chores swirling in your head often increase your stress. A simple to-do list often helps clarify what needs to get done. There is a slew of apps and websites that can help you organize everything from grocery lists to busy family calendars.

One of the most popular is cozi.com, a free website that allows family members to access and update a shared calendar. Cozi also offers to-do list and shopping list managers, which can all be accessed on your smartphone. Cozi CEO and co-founder Robbie Cape noted that families spend a lot of their time communicating logistics. If you can streamline that, family time is freed up for more meaningful conversations.

Scanning all of your important documents and organizing them on your computer can help cut down on both clutter and search time when you need it. Everything from the preschool phone tree to receipts you need for taxes can be scanned and stored electronically.

Stop wasting time updating your Rolodex and let your contacts do it for you. Victoria Ransom, co-founder and CEO of Wildfire, a social media marketing company, advises workers to join the professional networking site, LinkedIn. “Staying connected on a professional level is so important,” Ransom said.

Multi-task

Why flip through an old issue of Good Housekeeping while waiting for the doctor when you could be ordering your groceries or paying bills on your smartphone? Most banks have decent apps for accessing and managing your accounts from your phone. Sites like drugstore.com and Amazon.com allow you to order life’s little necessities and have them delivered to your door. If you take a bus or a train, just imagine all of the tasks you can check off your to-do list during your commute. 

Go virtual

Go virtual or go home. Wait, staying home is the point of going virtual. For those who can swing it, working remotely can have huge benefits. Gone are the commute times and travel costs. Money spent on lunches out and work clothes are significantly reduced, all stress savers.  Kim Burchett, senior manager of adoption services at Vidyo, has been working remotely for years. “Working from home has relieved stress. I still have a professional career and I don’t have to miss out on raising my family,” Burchett said via videoconference. As videoconference technology has improved and costs have dropped, more companies are willing to allow employees to work remotely, at least part of the time.

Videoconferencing doesn’t just allow you to stay connected to the office from home; it also allows you to connect to home when you’re away for work. Burchett recounted a time when her husband was in China for business, forcing him to miss their daughter’s swim meet. Burchett set up a videoconference on her iPad, allowing him watch the whole race in real time.

Join an online group, which can easily hook you up with helpful recommendations and resources. Yahoo! Groups have many moms and professionals groups to join, where you can ask online acquaintances for advice on everything from daycares to plumbers, saving you valuable time.

Schedule downtime

Log onto Outlook and schedule yourself a couple of 15-minute breaks every day. You’re more likely to step away and get a short, much-needed break if you get a reminder for it. Take a walk or do something to clear your head. Sometimes, stepping back for just a few minutes can help give you clarity and renewed energy.

Dana Macario is a Seattle-area writer who’s always looking for ways to make the juggle easier.

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Census Bureau

The gap between women’s and men’s pay remained about the same for the fourth straight year in 2011, as both genders got slammed by lower wages.

Women earned 77 cents for every dollar a man earned in 2011, the Census Bureau said this week as part of its extensive annual report on income and poverty.

The female-to-male earnings ratio for full-time workers has been little changed for four years, after hitting a record high of 78 percent in 2007.

Experts say the latest figures show that women aren’t making significant gains in terms of earning power – but men aren’t either.

"It’s not that gap is not closing,” said Katherine Gallagher Robbins, senior policy analyst with the National Women’s Law Center. “It’s that wages are sort of flattening.”

For men who work full-time and year-round, inflation-adjusted median earnings fell about 2.5 percent between 2010 and 2011, to $48,202, according to the Census Bureau. For women working full-time, the median, or midpoint, of annual earnings also fell by about 2.5 percent, to $37,118.

Experts say that there are other factors at work besides the lousy job market. The wage gap narrowed slowly and in fits and starts through the 1980s and 1990s, but further gains have been tough to come by.

“As a broad trend, I think we have plateaued in a way, or we may have plateaued,” said Ariane Hegewisch, study director with the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.

Women still face some big hurdles, especially those who want to have children and still advance in their careers, she said. Child care can be quite expensive, and some women may not be willing to put in the long hours required to make it to the top when their children are young.

The wage gap has persisted even though women have made huge inroads in traditionally male-dominated fields and positions. There have been several high-profile examples of that phenomenon, including Yahoo Inc.’s decision to appoint a pregnant Marissa Mayer to the role of chief executive.

Despite such gains, research shows that women generally take home less money each week even when they are doing the same job.

Women also now get postsecondary degrees at higher rates than men, and more education generally translates into higher earnings over the course of a lifetime. But experts note that what people study, and the fields they go into, matters as well.

“There’s a huge gender segregation there,” Hegewisch said. “Men get more technical (degrees) and women are in education and social work and the kind of softer sciences, and they pay less.”

The recession of 2007-09 was so hard on male-dominated fields such as construction that some referred to it as the mancession.  With men hit so hard, 38 percent of women outearned their husbands in 2009, a 3 percentage point increase from 2008.

But as the economy began recovering in 2009, it was women who fared worse in the job market. 

The situation has since become more of a mixed bag. In August, the unemployment rate for men was 8.3 percent. For women, it was 7.8 percent.

“I think the story right now is that everyone is struggling,” Robbins said. “Often when people think about the wage gap they think about it as women as compared to men. A lot of (families) have both women and men who are working. We think of it as a family security issue.”

Related: States with the biggest wage gap between men, women 

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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Tadija / featurepics.com

Putting on makeup to get a man may not be the most feminist concept, but it may also be hard-wired into women's brains.

When the economy goes sour, women stock up on products that can enhance their looks, a new study shows.

The reason is that women, consciously or not, are seeking to make themselves more attractive to the dwindling supply of men with good jobs, researchers say.

And in a bad economy, this suggests that companies selling beauty-enhancing products such as lipstick and designer jeans ought to hype the notion that with them you’re more likely to land a man, says study co-author Sarah E. Hill, an assistant professor of psychology at Texas Christian University.

“We may not consciously think we’re buying them to make ourselves more desirable to men,” Hill says. “But our lizard brains go after these things even when we think we’re too smart to be lured in by manipulative advertising claims like, ‘these jeans will help get you a man.’”

Hill and her colleagues got the idea to look at beauty enhancing products after she read an article describing the surprising success of Mary Kay, Inc., back in 2010 –  a time when the rest of the economy was tanking.

To see if the so-called lipstick-effect was broader than just one company, Hill and her colleagues examined 20 years of data scrutinizing the relationship between unemployment rates and sales of products that could be used to increase attractiveness, such as cosmetics, perfumes, and designer clothes.

“I was expecting to find sales of these products to at best be flat when unemployment was high,” she says. “That would have been interesting enough. But when we found that people were actually spending more during times of high unemployment, I thought that was fascinating.”

Data on sales of makeup, skin care, and fragrances in department stores echo the trend seen by Hill, with an increase in sales when unemployment was becoming bigger and bigger news. Sales rose 9 percent between 2009 and 2010 and another 11 percent between 2010 and 2011, according to The NPD Group, a market research company.

Next, the researchers ran a series of experiments to see if fears of high unemployment would affect the buying habits of men and women. In one, they asked 154 college students to read either an article on architecture or one on the economy, which was a modified version of a Wall Street Journal story that had originally been headlined “Worst Economic Crisis since the ‘30s With No End in Sight.”

Related: Do you make $30,000 a year or less? We want to hear from you.

The student volunteers were then asked to indicate their level of desire to purchase six products. Half the products – form-fitting jeans, form-fitting black dress (or polo-shirts for men), lipstick (or men’s facial cream) were chosen because they could be used to enhance physical appearance. In contrast, the other half were products such as, a wireless computer mouse, a stapler, and headphones.

Sure enough, women who read the story about the tanking economy were more likely to want to purchase beauty-enhancing products than women who read about architecture. Interestingly, choice of reading matter made no difference to the men.

Hill suspects the lipstick effect only impacts women because men in our culture don’t care whether their mates make a lot of money.

“There’s no impetus for men to make themselves more physically attractive to potential mates,” she says.

What Hill would like to know – and that may be the subject of a future study – is whether men who do have good jobs will be looking  for ways to advertise that fact to women they want to date.

“Perhaps if they have a good job in a recession they might do things to advertise that, such as wearing a flashy wristwatch or buying a fancy car.”  

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."