Women and Work: the Debates Continue

I recently told a friend we were busy putting together our annual Women’s Issue. “Really?” he asked me. “Isn’t that topic getting a little old?”

The answer was simple: “No!”

Just look at the recent debates over Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In, which exhorts women to step up and occupy leadership positions, or The Atlantic article, “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All” by Anne-Marie Slaughter (see our interview with Slaughter on page 58), or this spring, the Princeton mom’s open letter to female students about why they should snag a husband before they graduate.

I get my friend’s point. We’ve been discussing women in the workforce nonstop for more than 50 years, and women are starting companies and creating more jobs than men today. And yet, they still lag behind in earnings and in heading companies that make more than a million a year. And they are rarely seen in the corner office at big companies.

This issue is packed with stories that cover all of these topics. I’d like to hear your thoughts about the progress of women in the workforce. What do you see in the future? Email me at [email protected].