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Women around the world have achieved higher levels of education than ever before and today represent more than 40 percent of the global workforce. Yet their share of management positions remains unacceptably low. This timely study reviews the changing position of women in the labor market an din professional and managerial work. It examines the obstacles to women's career development and the action taken to improve their opportunities and promote gender equality.
This report discusses the earnings gap between men and women, as well as the occupational segregation that exists in management. It examines the situation of women managers in the area of public service as well as the financial, business, and banking sectors, while providing valuable figures and statistical information. Useful career strategies are offered including mentoring, networking, and career tracking approaches.

This important study provides a vivid photograph of national and international efforts to improve gender equality in management.

Editor's Note: read a good interview with the author at
http://gessler.emeraldinsight.com/vl=1049774/cl=103/nw=1/rpsv/now/archive/feb2003/spotlight.htm

This short, self-assured novel by Australian-born Jennings (Snake) brilliantly depicts the complicated life of a working woman on Wall Street during the dot-com boom. Cath, a freelance writer in her 40s, is married to Bailey, who's 25 years her senior. When he develops Alzheimer's, she takes a speech-writing job at an investment bank to pay for his expensive medical care. Wry but realistic, and realizing her position in a rigid boys' club hierarchy, she suppresses her liberal sensibility and defers to the chauvinists who dominate the firm, even cozying up to Horace, the company's most Machiavellian executive. Cath's Virgil through this hell is Mike, a cynical but gabby risk manager whose gossip and instruction illuminate the high-stakes office politics and dismal science of Wall Street. As Bailey deteriorates, in scene after heartbreaking scene, Cath finds unexpected succor "in the belly of the beast." Jennings, herself a former Wall Street speechwriter, makes it clear that the mad math of high finance and the delusions of Alzheimer's resemble one another: it's a metaphor she exploits with dramatic consequences in this piercing novel, gleaming with facets of hard-won knowledge, polished by experience and a keen intelligence. An ideal subway read for smart working men and women, it masterfully documents the culture of economic and corporate arrogance, while never losing sight of the human cost of such hubris.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

Men ask for what they want twice as often as women do and initiate negotiation four times more, report economist Linda Babcock and writer Sara Laschever in the footnoted but engaging Women Don't Ask. With vivid research examples drawn from cradle, classroom and playground, the authors detail culture as the culprit in discouraging women from negotiating on their own behalf.
Men, socialized in a "scrappier paradigm," learn to pursue and energize their goals at work and home. The two key elements are control and recognizing opportunity. For example, girls, rewarded for hard work, learn to see control as outside of themselves while boys are urged to take charge. Boys are schooled to recognize opportunity and girls to choose safe targets.

Several chapters are focused on prescription; how women can decrease anxiety, anticipate roadblocks, plan counter-moves and resist conceding too much or too soon. The authors shine in their examination of culture and gender--and their optimism about how women can counter the culture. They falter whenever they adopt the "sexes-from-a-different-planet" fallacy. Most notably, in a chapter that details a "female approach" to negotiating. Overall, the authors have created a smart summary of research and used it to affirm every woman's urgent right to ask. --Barbara Mackoff

Editor's Note: Read review at
http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/index.cfm?fa=viewArticle&ID=925

"I never wanted to work in business," writes Heffernan. Twenty years after expressing that sentiment, as CEO of a technology company, she found herself "having the time of my life" and wondered whether she had "completely lost my mind? Or sold my soul?" Heffernan sees "women creating a new business order that places values at the heart of business, takes sustainability seriously, and recognizes that business is and always will be emotional." Eleven chapters are peppered with her own illustrative anecdotes and insights plus those of 63 career women representing a wide variety of positions and professions. These contain instructive descriptions of potential pitfalls and urgent advice, each one ending with a list of "Travel Thoughts" to keep in mind. Readers are told how to climb the corporate ladder, maintain a female identity, navigate toxic environments, see through common fallacies, acquire power, balance work with personal life, break into top management, assert autonomy, strike out on their own and reinvent a "parallel universe" of humanitarian alternatives. Nothing is new or told in a fresh way, but Heffernan delivers the catalogue of female careerist frustration succinctly and sympathetically.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc.

Editor's Note: read a detailed review of this book on TheWorkingManager.com site at
http://www.theworkingmanager.com/bookreview/detail.asp?BookReviewNo=35

For a complete set of career resources check out our Career Center

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In delicious, bite-sized nuggets, Robin Wolaner's Naked Truths provide universal and instantly gratifying lessons for advancing your career. They can be put into action regardless of your age, experience, industry, or whether you are a one-woman start-up or a big-company employee.

Drawing on her own career in magazine publishing and media development, Wolaner shows you how to succeed because of, rather than despite, your unique background and personality. With humor, attitude, and fierce intelligence, she reveals:

* The keys to successful negotiation on behalf of the company or yourself
* What great public speakers know and tricks you can use
* When and how to burn your career plan
* How to do the right thing in the gray zones of business ethics
* Effective ways to recover from a mistake
* Unusual wisdom for hiring and firing -- and for being hired and fired
* And much more

Peppered with candid stories drawn from Wolaner's life, as well as those of other trailblazing women, Naked in the Boardroom is both essential and inspiring. It provides invaluable wisdom for anyone who sees success on the horizon, but who wants help getting there on her own terms.