Office Stereotyping and How It Stifles

"I think the laws have been won. Legally, we almost have it all," said Alison Stein, project director of the Younger Women's Task Force at the National Council of Women's Organizations.

But, she said, those laws don't change the subtle discrimination that women face in the workplace.

That could be partly because women are shown falling into these stereotypes in life outside the office, too.

If a woman and man have a child, the school still often asks for the mother's name as caretaker. Check out any commercial for cleaning supplies: It's the woman doing the vacuuming. (Sorry, Mom, but that's not the case in my house.)

A commercial for child's cough medicine? It's the mom tending to the child, bedside, in the middle of the night.

But in reality, it's increasingly both parents who do the day-care picking up, the cooking and the cleaning. Generation X fathers are asking to leave work early to hit their children's soccer games, and an increasing number of married women are the sole breadwinners. (Even one of the main characters on the popular television show "Desperate Housewives" went off to work this season as her husband decided to stay at home with the kids.)

In recent years, a notable number of Gen X women (who have been told by their mother's generation they can have it all) opted out of the workforce to raise a child. But considering the fact that gender stereotypes are still so prevalent in the workplace, researchers and women's advocates question the reasons some (of course not all) of the working women decide to stay home full time.

"You have to ask yourself, if that many women are choosing to do that, is it really a choice?" Stein said.

One has to wonder, indeed.

The fact is, women hold 50.3 percent of all management and professional positions. But only 7.9 percent of Fortune 500 top earners and 1.4 percent of Fortune 500 chief executives are women.

Is that because women aren't ambitious or willing and eager to take over the top spots? Or is it because they aren't groomed for positions beyond middle management or human resources or other "typically female" jobs because they are the caregivers of the office, not the leaders?

During the data-collecting process of the Catalyst study, the head researcher discussed the report with a few chief executives. One told the researcher that he thought the idea of diversity or inclusion was to bring someone different to the team or table. So, he proudly told the researcher, he liked to hire women because they are better at team-building and supporting.

The researcher pointed out that was exactly the kind of stereotyping that stops female advancement, even though that was not his intent. "Diversity and inclusion are important, but don't presuppose what they are going to bring," she told him. "Bring them in because of them, not because of assumptions about what they might be good at."

Or not good at, as far as people such as French (who has since resigned from his job at WPP Group) are concerned.

"I think he is a walking example of the kind of stereotyping we're talking about," Lang said. "He's saying because women are mothers, they can't be good leaders. And we know from all our research, that's just not the case. Women are ambitious, just as ambitious as men."

Forget the research. Just ask the woman sitting next to you what she expects out of her work life. It might be a little enlightening for all of us.

Join Amy from 11 a.m. to noon Tuesday athttp://washingtonpost.comto discuss your life at work . You can e-mail her with column ideas atlifeatwork@washpost.com.