'Women can get to the top of any single job that they want to in the UK," Stuart tells the Observer, "I mean, what else do you want to do, for God's sake? Women astronauts. Women miners. Women dentists. Women doctors. Women managing directors. What is it you haven't got?" [Guardian]

It cannot be denied that female and male politicians are treated differently: women are subjected to a different kind of scrutiny, are taken less seriously, and oftentimes do indeed find themselves butting against a glass ceiling. Says the Washington Post, "Like Hillary Rodham Clinton and Sarah Palin before her, Kennedy illustrated what some say is an enduring double standard in the handling of ambitious female office-seekers. Even as more women step forward as contenders for premier political jobs, observers say, few seem able to get there." The New York Times' Susan Dominus adds that Kennedy was doubly-cursed: as a middle-aged woman attempting to re-enter the workforce, she could have been a powerful role model. "Not only would a Senate appointment make clear that possibility, but Ms. Kennedy would have the chance to prove, by demonstrating competency or even excellence once in office, that sometimes it’s worth taking a risk bestowing a plum assignment on a smart, well-educated woman whose experience doesn’t perfectly line up on the résumé."

But...she's not like Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin before her. They had both worked in politics. Even Palin's resume — which was found risible a few months ago — is, politically, a phone book by comparison. Being a United States senator is not a trainee job, especially not in the shape this country is in. Caroline Kennedy is a woman who has never held office — or even much employment. Is she smart, likable, appealing? Sure. But would her name have been mentioned did she not have the magical aura of Camelot? Of course not. If anything, she was treated with an excess of courtesy. Take her dropping out because of family issues. Says Dominus, "If a male political contender had said that, everyone would have just dismissed it as the laziest of lines, a tired cliché that practically announces dirty laundry. When a woman says it, it seems at least plausible, but also a confirmation of the suspicion that women who spent their 30s on family probably will never really be able to put a career first." What? If anyone but Kennedy had said it, it would have been met with all the skepticism of Jeremy Piven's mercury levels, rather than grave respect. It's a valid point to suggest, as the Post does, that Kennedy's being penalized for a lack of experience grounded in very gender-based choices: she raised a family and now she's not getting a fair shake. I agree this is a fascinating line of inquiry and a real issue: but the fact remains that a senatorial seat is not academic. Putting someone unqualified in the position would do nothing to redress this issue, and would in fact make things look substantially easier than they are for those women who have to claw their way back into the workforce by sheer grit and determination.

In fact, I find arguments that Caroline Kennedy didn't succeed because she's a woman deeply offensive. Is any token woman good enough for people, then? There are hundreds of qualified, intelligent, experienced women — two New York politicians spring to mind — who can compete on any playing field. To suggest that Caroline Kennedy is not today a New York senator because of her sex is an insult to them — to Kirsten Gillibrand — and to the rest of us.

Does A Glass Ceiling Persist In Politics? [Washington Post]
Coming Up Short As A Role Model For The Mommy Track [New York Times]

Universities have begun to notice that women are greatly underrepresented in business programs. Only 20% of most executive M.B.A. classes are female, and for certain top programs, the percentage is even lower- sometimes as small as 5%. To put this in perspective, women currently make up nearly 30% of the class at full-time M.B.A. programs and more than 40% in part-time programs.

Several reasons have been given for this disparity. Experts say that fewer women attend E.M.B.A. programs because of the time commitment, and that "some women are deterred because the programs' formats interfere with raising a family, something experts say men don't worry about as much." The Wall Street Journal also cites another reason fewer women are tempted to enroll in E.M.B.A. programs: they are discouraged by the glass ceiling. Women who perceive that they have already climbed as far as they possibly can on the corporate latter are more likely to believe that a degree won't help their careers.

Mori Taheripour, vice president of corporate diversity at the American Red Cross and outreach coordinator for University of Pennsylvania's Wharton west coast school of business, says that schools have a difficult time reaching women because they don't factor in the difficulties of balancing family and career:

(You must) be able to show women that even though they have all of these other commitments in their lives, this is something that others can do, and others have done it. We ask for about 10 years work experience, so the average age of our students is 35 and that's a point in their life where most of them have families and have senior level positions or are entrepreneurs. So it's a challenge to get them to say "I can add one more thing to my plate."

Taheripour has organized many events designed to bring in female students. She says spending face-to-face time with the candidates is also useful; fostering relationships between the prospective students is important, she says. Since Taheripour started her outreach efforts in 2006, the number of women enrolling in the executive program has risen by more than 10%. Columbia University has tried a similar tactic: through launching a women's outreach group and mentoring programs, Columbia has so far reached hundreds of potential female applicants.

Some schools have even changed the program's format to be more appealing to women. Emory University's has started a modular E.M.B.A. program, which meets for nine residency periods over 21 months. And it seems that their efforts are working. The program's current class is 33% female, as compared with Emory's traditional E.M.B.A. program, which is still at only 20%. However, some aren't so positive about the change. Susan Ashford, associate dean of the executive M.B.A. program at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business says that the glass ceiling is still in place for many women on the executive track. She points out that although 50.6% of U.S. women in business hold management or professional positions, only 15.7% of Fortune 500 corporate officers are women.

A Female Face on Executive M.B.A.s [WSJ]
Q&A: How to Attract Women To Executive M.B.A. Programs [WSJ]

Goodson looked at 11,500 professional women and 16,700 men in 34 countries and found that, in general, women are less likely to brag and/or outright lie about their professional experiences to get ahead. More so then men, women appear to have bought into the myth of the meritocracy, according to Goodson, "They believe hard work alone is sufficient to put them on salary and status par with their male counterparts," to which she adds, "Good work is important, but good work alone does not, as the myth says, speak for itself, you have to give it a voice." Which is good, until you look at studies that say that aggressive women are sometime looked down upon for being aggressive. That right there is the glass ceiling: the idea that you have to be like a man but not too much like a man to get ahead, not that you'll get that far competing with aggressive men if you are not aggressive. The glass ceiling is less about open discrimination (though that remains) and more about stereotypes of behavior and expectations that women have to confront and overcome to get ahead.

Of course, the Daily Male takes the whole study in stride, absolving men and society of all blame for the role of women in the workplace. They go through the study and find where Goodson "exposes" the fact that some women (particularly in the U.S.) have an attitude that if they got there without help, their younger counterparts can, too. So it's not just women keeping ourselves down, it's women keeping other women down, too! Of course, one can rather easily find examples of that being untrue, but examples and nuance aren't exactly the provenance of the Daily Male.

So what is a woman to do? For one, laugh heartily at the idea that your work is going to get noticed for being fabulous, or that hard work alone will propel you to a leadership position. Recent studies show that people that work hard get to keep working hard while people that network better (i.e., that promote themselves) get promoted. Your boss isn't a robot any more than you are, and hiring and promotion decisions are never going to be made in an emotional vacuum. Then start keeping a list of your accomplishments, take credit for the work you've done and stop waiting to be noticed as though work is a junior high school dance. Ask for what you want and what you think you deserve and show your company exactly as much loyalty as they're prepared to show you — which, if they're not promoting you or giving you a raise because they prefer the type of employee that lies loudly about his accomplishments over one who accomplishes something and points it out, is exactly none. Bloody your fists on the damn glass ceiling.

Career Women Are The Own Worst Enemies: Study [Reuters]
Women Only Have Themselves To Blame For Failing To Crack The Glass Ceiling, Says Female Scientist [Daily Mail]
Some Women Work Too Hard to Be Promoted [US News & World Report]

But, seriously, look around the next time you're out to dinner somewhere nice. Chances are, the executive chef is a man. At the end of Top Chef Season 3, New York Magazine interviewed seven prominent female chefs in New York about sexism in the industry. All of them had stories about being ignored by everyone from colleagues to vendors, about the difficulty of finding investors to open your own restaurant or worrying about being a "gimmick" chef due to gender, and about how "girls" go into pastry because baking is considered more of a woman's job in a professional kitchen. The most prominent chefs in the country (and on television) are men, the biggest and most difficult-to-get-into restaurants in any city usually have kitchens run by men, and, heck, the nicer the restaurant, the more likely it is for even the waitstaff to be male. Many of us rhapsodize about Mom's home cooking, but we vote for Dad's fancy steaks when we're out and about without even thinking about it.

So, the next time you're out for a nice dinner, maybe take your feminism along and make a point to patronize a place where a woman's in charge of more than just your seating or your dessert. As Stephanie, Lisa and a lot of other women out there prove, not every woman's place is in the kitchen, but some women work really well there.

Finale Wrap-Up: "Top Chef" [Salon]
A Woman’s Place? [New York Magazine]