Framing the issue of work-life balance - as if the two were dramatically opposed - practically ensures work will lose out. Who would ever choose work over life?

Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few.

Without fear, women can pursue professional success and personal fulfillment-and freely choose one, or the other, or both.

And in situations where a man and a woman each receive negative feedback, the woman's self-confidence and self-esteem drop to a much greater degree. The internalization of failure and the insecurity it breeds hurt future performance, so this pattern has serious long-term consequences.

The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results. Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about gender inequality as much as women do.

Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less.

And anyway, who wears a tiara on a jungle gym?