The decision to have a child is both a private and a public decision, for children are our collective future.

If you show up without makeup or looking sloppy, no matter how impressive your ideas are, no one is going to pay attention to you. People take you more seriously if you look polished.

The feedback women are getting at work is amazingly ineffective or vague. You need to signal to your boss or senior colleagues that you want honest feedback, and that you promise not to take it too personally.

Quite simply, promotions are not just functions of ability, values, or the numbers you hit, but also rest critically on how you are perceived.

Fashions change, and with the new psychoanalytical perspective of the postwar period [WWII], child rearing became enshrined as thespecial responsibility of mothersany shortcoming in adult life was now seen as rooted in the failure of mothering during childhood.

The degree to which the child-rearing professionals continue to be out of touch with reality is astounding. For example, a widely read manual on breast-feeding, devotes fewer than two pages to the working mother.

There are six elements of gravitas critical to leadership: grace under fire, decisiveness, emotional intelligence and the ability to read a room, integrity and authenticity (people don't like fakes), a vision that inspires others, and a stellar reputation.