The many comments responding to my piece of May 16th read like postcards from the 1970s – from the early bitter edge of the gender wars. I was beginning to absorb this material, figuring out how to respond when I was hit by another deluge—200 comments that came in over a 24 period in reaction to a Q&A in Computerworld.

Both waves of reaction provide deep confirmation of my main finding—that the problems faced by female scientists, engineers, and technologists are enormously serious. These blogs and posts show that women around the country see SET workplace cultures as hostile, predatory and demeaning. They can hardly contain their disillusionment and despair. Take Jessica, Diane, and Anonymous:

“I work with ten forty-something men who work 12 hours a day, read tech magazines for fun, and bond at Hooters….If I counted the number of times I have been sexually harassed, you’d gasp.”
- Jessica

“I am the only woman in a technical position in my company. Many of [our clients] think I’m in the meetings to take notes for the men. Some even apologize for boring me with technical discussions, assuming I have no idea what they’re talking about. Imagine if men had to put up with this on top of the stress and pressures of an IT career!
- Diane

As a female in IT for over 10 years and managed to work my way to the executive level, I‘ve experienced sexual harassment on a quarterly basis. At all levels of the corporate ladder I was propositioned. Me, a married, never “fooled around” on my husband, Brooks Brother suit executive had to fight off male employees at every turn. A male superior even went so far as to place a bet with a male subordinate who would sleep with me first.
- Anonymous

Sadly (though predictably) “Anonymous” ended up quitting her job. She did manage “to walk out the door with self respect” having decided that she was not going to sleep her way to the top. “Looking at myself in the mirror every morning” was more important that making it to the C-suite. And so she joined the female exodus—the 52% of women who leave their jobs in SET ten years into promising careers in science and technology.

These blogs and posts do contain some threads of hope. Trixie reminds us that at least some SET companies are developing programs that support working mothers.

“When I quit my power job to move out of state and be closer to my family in preparation for adoption, the company graciously offered me a telecommuting position. Now 3 years later I telecommute at the Director level and have been offered a VP position. They couldn’t give me a daycare on-site but they did allow me to work from home and use limited daycare services. I applaud them for recognizing that a woman can be a mother and a worker if she so desires.”
- Trixie

Despite glimmerings of good news, in the hundreds of responses I have received to date despondency outweighs hope four to one.

One thing I’m sure of, there’s an urgent need for employers to absorb the following:

SET companies are suffering from talent constraints and they need to figure out how to retain female scientists, engineers and technologists who exist in large numbers (contrary to popular belief) but are abandoning their chosen fields in droves, largely because of the predatory workplace cultures described above. It’s time to take action. A place to start is taking a look at the 14 new company initiatives described in our Harvard Business Review report, The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology. Also please see our free Harvard Business Review article, Stopping the Exodus of Women in Science.

Larry Summers was incorrect when he suggested in his now-infamous speech of January 2005 that the lack of women scientists might be explained by, among other things, genetics.

Women, it turns out, are excelling in science, engineering, and technology (SET). In 2007, girls won both the Siemens and Intel science competitions and walked off with 53% of graduate degrees in the biological sciences. Despite the bias and barriers that continue to exist in our culture, a surprisingly large number of young women embark on careers in science.

A new study—which I co-authored—to be published next month by the Harvard Business Review (see “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology”) demonstrates that over 40% of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders are now female. In pharmaceuticals, high tech, petro-chemicals, and aerospace, young women are making impressive strides – and garnering rave performance reviews.

This rosy picture is spoiled by one calamitous fact. A little ways down the road, more than half of these women drop out—pushed and shoved by macho work environments, serious isolation, and extreme job pressures.

This new research identifies a fight-or-flight moment (ages 35–40) when female attrition spikes dramatically. Around 35-40, women across SET experience a perfect storm. Career problems escalate and family pressures deepen at the same time. The losses are massive – fully 52% of women fall away. This is hugely painful, both for women who abandon hard-won credentials and for employers struggling with worsening labor shortages.

So what to do?

High points of this study are 14 new company initiatives that help women stay on track in SET careers. Some tackle the fight-or-flight moment. Johnson & Johnson's Crossing the Finish Line and Intel’s Technical Leadership Pipelines Program for Women provide critical career development opportunities just before this break point. Others target isolation. Cisco’s Executive Talent Insertion Program is designed to bring in a significant number of new women as senior-level lateral hires.

The potential gains are huge. Reducing female attrition by one quarter would add 220,000 qualified people to the SET labor pool. Given the tight labor market in SET fields, this is good news indeed.

Are you a woman in science, engineering, or technology? Tell us your story.

Even in progressive circles, a woman's career success tends to threaten loved ones. It's old news that husbands often disapprove of a wife that outshines them. What's new is that daughters can also have a hard time with a conspicuously successful mother. With another critic in the family, women are desperate for recognition. Any employer who can conjure this up stands a real chance of winning the war for female talent.

In a recent interview, Eleanor, a distinguished female academic (Dame of the British Empire, President of an Oxbridge College), told me that when her 27-year-old daughter was around, she “hid her work under the table—just like Jane Austen.” To atone for her over-the-top career (which seems to “diminish” the somewhat more standard achievements of her daughter), she finds herself constantly needing to prove that she is just a regular mum—available for impromptu telephone chats and babysitting duties. While trying to avoid big fat lies, she finds that in conversations with her daughter, various honorary degrees—and splendid reviews of her recent book—conveniently “slip her memory.”

Eleanor understands some of the factors at play. Top of the list is maternal guilt. Due to fierce time pressures in the early stretches of her career, she hadn’t been all that available when her daughter was three and 13. She feels the least she can do is attempt to make up.

Eleanor is not alone. Many accomplished women find it difficult to “strut their stuff” at home—it undermines and threatens wifely and maternal roles. The resulting lack of recognition has surprisingly serious consequences.

In her work on ambition, psychiatrist Anna Fels demonstrates how achievement has two roots: mastery and recognition (see her book, Necessary Dreams). Talented individuals need constant encouragement, appreciation, and support if their abilities and skills are to be fully realized. Apologizing for or hiding one’s “smarts” can unravel ambition in a person’s life.

The data show that many women turn to employers for recognition. In a recent survey, the Center for Work-Life Policy found that recognition trumps compensation and title as motivating factors for female executives. When it comes to what inspires high-achieving women to go to work every day and give it their all, encouragement and appreciation edge out money and power.

Corporate initiatives that pony up meaningful recognition are therefore enormously powerful retention tools for women. GE’s women network does a great job celebrating female achievement, Intel’s “Women Principal Engineer’s Forum” showcases women and propels them upward on the technical track. Merrill Lynch’s “IGrow” and Time Warner’s “Breakthrough Leadership” program help women claim and sustain ambition. And Johnson & Johnson “Crossing the Finish Line” initiative recognizes and expands what talented multicultural women can do.

In addition to these company policies, what can individual women do to rewrite the mother-daughter narrative? My advice here is to do a much better job talking to daughters about “the struggle.”

Many of us have just spent 30 years “dancing backwards in high heels” (to use Linda Hirshman’s words) while working much harder than any man would. We’ve spent a lot of our lives studying for extra credit: being better prepared, better researched and staying later at the office. It’s been the only way to confound gender stereotypes.

We’ve been so concerned with not seeming whiney or bitter in front of our daughters that we haven’t done a very good job walking them through how difficult this “vaulting over the barriers” has been. More insight on this front might well make daughters less grudging – and more celebratory – of mother’s success.

Read all of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's posts.

In late February, as Hillary Clinton embarked on her last ditch attempt to rescue her faltering campaign she decided to showcase her superior “leadership credentials.” In high profile speeches on foreign policy, which featured an impressive mix of hard-nosed realism and encyclopedic knowledge, she sought to differentiate herself from her soft-focused rival.

She fell flat on her face. For the umpteenth time, the press described her as hectoring, abrasive, and shrill. Toughmindedness and erudition don’t get women leaders high marks on the likeability scale. We seem to prefer our female leaders when they’re close to tears (think New Hampshire) or on the brink of throwing in the towel (think the closing moments of the Texas debate). Clinton’s approval ratings spiked after both these moments.

Clinton’s difficulties are all too familiar to female executives. The research shows that in corporate cultures strong females are often thoroughly disliked. In a 1990 study, D. Butler found that people respond negatively to assertive women. Assertive men, on the other hand, are admired as “managing for strong performance.” In a similar vein, M.E. Heilman (1994) found that when women speak out to defend their turf they are seen as “control freaks,” while men, acting the same way, are seen as highly committed. Much more recently, A. Eagly and L. Carli (2007) have found that self promotion is particularly risky for women. While self-aggrandizement in a man is seen as displaying confidence and competence, this is not the case for a woman. All too often, she is heartily disliked for her “boastfulness” and seen as much less deserving of support by bosses and subordinates. A particularly discouraging finding is that men and women share these negative takes on powerful females.

So what to do?

The good news is that leading edge corporations are beginning to take gender bias seriously. Cisco, for example, has rolled out a “microinequities” training program that seeks to tackle stereotype and stigma, rooting out the values and behaviors that causes us all to be complicit in the slights and subtle put downs that are the stuff of bias. The goal here is, of course, to create the conditions that let talented women explore their enormous strengths, without fearing that this will drive their “likeability quotient” into the basement.

And let's not forget that Clinton won in Ohio and Texas. The American public does like winners, even feisty female ones.

Are you working to be a likeable leader? How's that working out for you?

As a keynote speaker at Sodexho’s Inclusion Summit in Paris last month, I got an inside take on where Europe is at on the diversity front.

I encountered some residual suspicion of the diversity and inclusion agenda. At the kick-off event, a “meet and greet” cocktail hour, one recalcitrant French executive put it succinctly, “none of us like the fact that this entire field was developed in America. In a George W. Bush world, U.S. exports just aren’t that popular.”

But practical business realities are fast undermining such attitudes.

Take Sodexho’s situation. According to Rohini Anand, Sodexho’s Chief Diversity Officer, over the next decade the giant food and facilities management company (which employs 300,000 people worldwide) needs to recruit two million young people to meet its growth objectives. In her words, “there’s no way to accomplish this without becoming an ‘employer of choice’ for all talent, including female and multi-cultural employees.”

So Michel Landel, CEO of Sodexho, has pledged to become a leader in D&I . This commitment was on display in Paris on January 24. Landel insisted that his entire global leadership team attend—men as well as women. He showcased successful diversity initiatives at Merrill Lynch, P&G, IBM, and Sanofi-Aventis. This spoke volumes because these firms are important clients of Sodexho. Finally, he had the good sense to attend the conference himself. I don’t mean that he ducked in and out—he was physically present for the entire daylong summit.

In an interview, Landel talked about his motives. “A commitment to diversity is essential to tap into the best talent. But it’s also the only way to come through for customers. This company intersects with a huge array of customers—each year there are 50 million ‘touch points’ globally. If we cannot understand the values and attitudes of men and women around the world, we’re dead.”

“Some years ago I lost an account at a Jewish university in the U.S. I hate losing accounts and I went back to find out why. I was told that the company had been less than fully responsive to a request for more Kosher meals. We’d agreed to supply three Kosher meals a week, which, from the vantage point of the university was meager in the extreme. Even part-time Kosher people need more than that.”

Landel is not just talk, he has clear, concrete goals. He fully intends moving the dial on diversity at Sodexho. For example, he is significantly increasing the number of women in top ranks over the next three years.

Landel exemplifies a new breed of European CEO, one who is unafraid to take on board some of the best elements in American-style talent management practices to succeed in a fiercely competitive global marketplace. His French/German/Italian counterparts have much to learn here.

What are you doing to further your company's diversity and inclusion agenda?

Read all of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's "Winning the Talent War" posts.

My first female boss warned me, “When the going gets tough, women lose out.” This piece of conventional wisdom seems to be alive and well.

Whether one is talking about Patricia Dunn (Hewlett Packard), who was forced out in ‘06 over leaks to the press, or Zoe Cruz (Morgan Stanley), who was shot down in ’07 in the wake of huge subprime mortgage losses, women tend to be the “fall guys” in troubled times.

However, in 2008 there are threats more serious than the ousting of a few top female executives: the gutting of programmatic initiatives that have driven and sustained women’s progress. Will companies in challenging market environments use the excuse of “tough times” to undermine diversity initiatives? When red ink abounds, it becomes tempting to cut programs that are newly defined as “frills” or “luxuries.”

Ana Duarte McCarthy, Chief Diversity Officer at Citi, has a view on these matters. In an interview she talked about how to preserve women’s precious gains. She offered three pieces of advice:

First, now’s the time to let employees know that they matter -- a time for visible leadership on the people front. At his first town hall meeting, Vikram Pandit (the new CEO of Citi) got this right. He chose to focus his remarks on Citi’s employees, telling them they were the company’s most important asset. In his words, “If talent is what drives success, we are destined to win as an organization.”

Second, now’s the time to re-emphasize the business case for diversity. Citi’s signature Flexible Work Initiative already requires that applicants frame out a business plan detailing how performance standards will be maintained -- and even exceeded. Duarte McCarthy feels that 2008 might well be the year to consider the real estate savings associated with flexible work schedules. As she described it, “this will help align the business case for flexibility and help these programs survive and thrive.”

Third, it’s clearly the time to emphasize that many diversity and inclusion programs pump up rates of engagement, something sorely needed in a company involved in re-structuring. In Duarte McCarthy’s view, the Citi’s Women’s Initiative, including women’s councils and networks globally, are hugely important in this regard. These organizations, volunteer-led, have a proven ability to enhance feelings of loyalty and attachment to the company.

In short, diversity initiatives are a bargain not to be passed up by astute leaders of companies dealing with tough times.

What is your company doing to make sure women don't lose out?

Read all of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's "Winning the Talent War" posts.