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.

There are three pillars, regardless of your work culture, whether you're in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street: how you look, how you speak, and how you behave. It's all three things, and nailing them makes you a contender.

Modern women are squeezed between the devil and the deep blue sea, and there are no lifeboats out there in the form of public policies designed to help these women combine their roles as mothers and as workers.

Recently we've been hearing a lot about women "having it all." Myself, I think that is not really an accurate description of female lives today. It seems to me that what we have been up to is DOING it all.

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.

There are simple rules of engagement: You need to have your voice, but it has to be very intentional - be brief and to the point, with fresh ideas. Don't restate things someone else has said. Make eye contact with the person who has the floor.

For women the wage gap sets up an infuriating Catch-22 situation. They do the housework because they earn less, and they earn lessbecause they do the housework.