Russia and China boast an impressive pool of well-qualified women. Most of these women work full time but hold low-level jobs that dramatically underutilize their skills. They comprise a major opportunity for talent-starved multinational corporations seeking to expand in markets around the world.

Recent research targeting highly qualified women scientists and engineers in Russia and China (see The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology) flagged the following points:

• The female talent pipeline in these countries is rich and deep. In Maoist China, women were said to “hold up half the sky” and were given equal access to education. In the USSR, equal educational opportunity prevailed with women encouraged to enter industrial fields that, under capitalism, had been off limits to females. As a result, in modern day Russia and China women comprise 50-60% of the graduating class in science and engineering and often dominate the top rankings.

• In Russian and China the power elite has been particularly effective in denying women access to senior positions. In these countries old elites (communist party cadres) and new elites (democratic party bosses) have failed to prioritize women’s rights. Indeed senior male executives are quite open in their desire to block the advancement of women. Excuses run the gamut from “She hasn’t put in time on the coal face” to “If a women gets promoted it’s only because she’s slept with the boss.”

• Thus these high caliber women are prime recruits for global companies. Chinese and Russian women want to work for multinational companies—they see Chinese- and Russian-owned companies as misogynistic and reluctant to invest in appropriate environmental and safety measures.Within the universe of global companies, U.S.-based and UK-based firms are preferred—they earn high marks on the woman-friendly front and are seen as much greener and much safer than domestic companies. In an interview one senior Russian female engineer pointed out that Russian owned companies have an on-the-job injury rate that is ten times that of U.S.-owned companies.

One word of caution is in order. For Chinese and Russian women eldercare issues loom large. In Shanghai, working women—many of whom have no siblings due to the one child policy—talk about parents and parents-in-law with broken health living in the spare room. In Moscow women talk about older relatives, devastated by perestroika, needing help with rent payments and grocery bills. More than half (52%) of working women in these countries report coping with eldercare responsibilities compared with 19% in the U.S.

Russian and Chinese women provide a prime source of talent going forward—but to fully deploy this valuable human capital, global companies may need to get serious on the elder care front.

What does your company do to help out with elderly relatives? Citi and Time Warner have imaginative supports in place. Does your employee assistance program offer up some interesting options?

The many comments responding to my piece of May 16th read like postcards from the 1970s – from the early bitter edge of the gender wars. I was beginning to absorb this material, figuring out how to respond when I was hit by another deluge—200 comments that came in over a 24 period in reaction to a Q&A in Computerworld.

Both waves of reaction provide deep confirmation of my main finding—that the problems faced by female scientists, engineers, and technologists are enormously serious. These blogs and posts show that women around the country see SET workplace cultures as hostile, predatory and demeaning. They can hardly contain their disillusionment and despair. Take Jessica, Diane, and Anonymous:

“I work with ten forty-something men who work 12 hours a day, read tech magazines for fun, and bond at Hooters….If I counted the number of times I have been sexually harassed, you’d gasp.”
- Jessica

“I am the only woman in a technical position in my company. Many of [our clients] think I’m in the meetings to take notes for the men. Some even apologize for boring me with technical discussions, assuming I have no idea what they’re talking about. Imagine if men had to put up with this on top of the stress and pressures of an IT career!
- Diane

As a female in IT for over 10 years and managed to work my way to the executive level, I‘ve experienced sexual harassment on a quarterly basis. At all levels of the corporate ladder I was propositioned. Me, a married, never “fooled around” on my husband, Brooks Brother suit executive had to fight off male employees at every turn. A male superior even went so far as to place a bet with a male subordinate who would sleep with me first.
- Anonymous

Sadly (though predictably) “Anonymous” ended up quitting her job. She did manage “to walk out the door with self respect” having decided that she was not going to sleep her way to the top. “Looking at myself in the mirror every morning” was more important that making it to the C-suite. And so she joined the female exodus—the 52% of women who leave their jobs in SET ten years into promising careers in science and technology.

These blogs and posts do contain some threads of hope. Trixie reminds us that at least some SET companies are developing programs that support working mothers.

“When I quit my power job to move out of state and be closer to my family in preparation for adoption, the company graciously offered me a telecommuting position. Now 3 years later I telecommute at the Director level and have been offered a VP position. They couldn’t give me a daycare on-site but they did allow me to work from home and use limited daycare services. I applaud them for recognizing that a woman can be a mother and a worker if she so desires.”
- Trixie

Despite glimmerings of good news, in the hundreds of responses I have received to date despondency outweighs hope four to one.

One thing I’m sure of, there’s an urgent need for employers to absorb the following:

SET companies are suffering from talent constraints and they need to figure out how to retain female scientists, engineers and technologists who exist in large numbers (contrary to popular belief) but are abandoning their chosen fields in droves, largely because of the predatory workplace cultures described above. It’s time to take action. A place to start is taking a look at the 14 new company initiatives described in our Harvard Business Review report, The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology. Also please see our free Harvard Business Review article, Stopping the Exodus of Women in Science.

Larry Summers was incorrect when he suggested in his now-infamous speech of January 2005 that the lack of women scientists might be explained by, among other things, genetics.

Women, it turns out, are excelling in science, engineering, and technology (SET). In 2007, girls won both the Siemens and Intel science competitions and walked off with 53% of graduate degrees in the biological sciences. Despite the bias and barriers that continue to exist in our culture, a surprisingly large number of young women embark on careers in science.

A new study—which I co-authored—to be published next month by the Harvard Business Review (see “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology”) demonstrates that over 40% of highly qualified scientists, engineers and technologists on the lower rungs of corporate career ladders are now female. In pharmaceuticals, high tech, petro-chemicals, and aerospace, young women are making impressive strides – and garnering rave performance reviews.

This rosy picture is spoiled by one calamitous fact. A little ways down the road, more than half of these women drop out—pushed and shoved by macho work environments, serious isolation, and extreme job pressures.

This new research identifies a fight-or-flight moment (ages 35–40) when female attrition spikes dramatically. Around 35-40, women across SET experience a perfect storm. Career problems escalate and family pressures deepen at the same time. The losses are massive – fully 52% of women fall away. This is hugely painful, both for women who abandon hard-won credentials and for employers struggling with worsening labor shortages.

So what to do?

High points of this study are 14 new company initiatives that help women stay on track in SET careers. Some tackle the fight-or-flight moment. Johnson & Johnson's Crossing the Finish Line and Intel’s Technical Leadership Pipelines Program for Women provide critical career development opportunities just before this break point. Others target isolation. Cisco’s Executive Talent Insertion Program is designed to bring in a significant number of new women as senior-level lateral hires.

The potential gains are huge. Reducing female attrition by one quarter would add 220,000 qualified people to the SET labor pool. Given the tight labor market in SET fields, this is good news indeed.

Are you a woman in science, engineering, or technology? Tell us your story.

Even in progressive circles, a woman's career success tends to threaten loved ones. It's old news that husbands often disapprove of a wife that outshines them. What's new is that daughters can also have a hard time with a conspicuously successful mother. With another critic in the family, women are desperate for recognition. Any employer who can conjure this up stands a real chance of winning the war for female talent.

In a recent interview, Eleanor, a distinguished female academic (Dame of the British Empire, President of an Oxbridge College), told me that when her 27-year-old daughter was around, she “hid her work under the table—just like Jane Austen.” To atone for her over-the-top career (which seems to “diminish” the somewhat more standard achievements of her daughter), she finds herself constantly needing to prove that she is just a regular mum—available for impromptu telephone chats and babysitting duties. While trying to avoid big fat lies, she finds that in conversations with her daughter, various honorary degrees—and splendid reviews of her recent book—conveniently “slip her memory.”

Eleanor understands some of the factors at play. Top of the list is maternal guilt. Due to fierce time pressures in the early stretches of her career, she hadn’t been all that available when her daughter was three and 13. She feels the least she can do is attempt to make up.

Eleanor is not alone. Many accomplished women find it difficult to “strut their stuff” at home—it undermines and threatens wifely and maternal roles. The resulting lack of recognition has surprisingly serious consequences.

In her work on ambition, psychiatrist Anna Fels demonstrates how achievement has two roots: mastery and recognition (see her book, Necessary Dreams). Talented individuals need constant encouragement, appreciation, and support if their abilities and skills are to be fully realized. Apologizing for or hiding one’s “smarts” can unravel ambition in a person’s life.

The data show that many women turn to employers for recognition. In a recent survey, the Center for Work-Life Policy found that recognition trumps compensation and title as motivating factors for female executives. When it comes to what inspires high-achieving women to go to work every day and give it their all, encouragement and appreciation edge out money and power.

Corporate initiatives that pony up meaningful recognition are therefore enormously powerful retention tools for women. GE’s women network does a great job celebrating female achievement, Intel’s “Women Principal Engineer’s Forum” showcases women and propels them upward on the technical track. Merrill Lynch’s “IGrow” and Time Warner’s “Breakthrough Leadership” program help women claim and sustain ambition. And Johnson & Johnson “Crossing the Finish Line” initiative recognizes and expands what talented multicultural women can do.

In addition to these company policies, what can individual women do to rewrite the mother-daughter narrative? My advice here is to do a much better job talking to daughters about “the struggle.”

Many of us have just spent 30 years “dancing backwards in high heels” (to use Linda Hirshman’s words) while working much harder than any man would. We’ve spent a lot of our lives studying for extra credit: being better prepared, better researched and staying later at the office. It’s been the only way to confound gender stereotypes.

We’ve been so concerned with not seeming whiney or bitter in front of our daughters that we haven’t done a very good job walking them through how difficult this “vaulting over the barriers” has been. More insight on this front might well make daughters less grudging – and more celebratory – of mother’s success.

Read all of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's posts.

In late February, as Hillary Clinton embarked on her last ditch attempt to rescue her faltering campaign she decided to showcase her superior “leadership credentials.” In high profile speeches on foreign policy, which featured an impressive mix of hard-nosed realism and encyclopedic knowledge, she sought to differentiate herself from her soft-focused rival.

She fell flat on her face. For the umpteenth time, the press described her as hectoring, abrasive, and shrill. Toughmindedness and erudition don’t get women leaders high marks on the likeability scale. We seem to prefer our female leaders when they’re close to tears (think New Hampshire) or on the brink of throwing in the towel (think the closing moments of the Texas debate). Clinton’s approval ratings spiked after both these moments.

Clinton’s difficulties are all too familiar to female executives. The research shows that in corporate cultures strong females are often thoroughly disliked. In a 1990 study, D. Butler found that people respond negatively to assertive women. Assertive men, on the other hand, are admired as “managing for strong performance.” In a similar vein, M.E. Heilman (1994) found that when women speak out to defend their turf they are seen as “control freaks,” while men, acting the same way, are seen as highly committed. Much more recently, A. Eagly and L. Carli (2007) have found that self promotion is particularly risky for women. While self-aggrandizement in a man is seen as displaying confidence and competence, this is not the case for a woman. All too often, she is heartily disliked for her “boastfulness” and seen as much less deserving of support by bosses and subordinates. A particularly discouraging finding is that men and women share these negative takes on powerful females.

So what to do?

The good news is that leading edge corporations are beginning to take gender bias seriously. Cisco, for example, has rolled out a “microinequities” training program that seeks to tackle stereotype and stigma, rooting out the values and behaviors that causes us all to be complicit in the slights and subtle put downs that are the stuff of bias. The goal here is, of course, to create the conditions that let talented women explore their enormous strengths, without fearing that this will drive their “likeability quotient” into the basement.

And let's not forget that Clinton won in Ohio and Texas. The American public does like winners, even feisty female ones.

Are you working to be a likeable leader? How's that working out for you?

As a keynote speaker at Sodexho’s Inclusion Summit in Paris last month, I got an inside take on where Europe is at on the diversity front.

I encountered some residual suspicion of the diversity and inclusion agenda. At the kick-off event, a “meet and greet” cocktail hour, one recalcitrant French executive put it succinctly, “none of us like the fact that this entire field was developed in America. In a George W. Bush world, U.S. exports just aren’t that popular.”

But practical business realities are fast undermining such attitudes.

Take Sodexho’s situation. According to Rohini Anand, Sodexho’s Chief Diversity Officer, over the next decade the giant food and facilities management company (which employs 300,000 people worldwide) needs to recruit two million young people to meet its growth objectives. In her words, “there’s no way to accomplish this without becoming an ‘employer of choice’ for all talent, including female and multi-cultural employees.”

So Michel Landel, CEO of Sodexho, has pledged to become a leader in D&I . This commitment was on display in Paris on January 24. Landel insisted that his entire global leadership team attend—men as well as women. He showcased successful diversity initiatives at Merrill Lynch, P&G, IBM, and Sanofi-Aventis. This spoke volumes because these firms are important clients of Sodexho. Finally, he had the good sense to attend the conference himself. I don’t mean that he ducked in and out—he was physically present for the entire daylong summit.

In an interview, Landel talked about his motives. “A commitment to diversity is essential to tap into the best talent. But it’s also the only way to come through for customers. This company intersects with a huge array of customers—each year there are 50 million ‘touch points’ globally. If we cannot understand the values and attitudes of men and women around the world, we’re dead.”

“Some years ago I lost an account at a Jewish university in the U.S. I hate losing accounts and I went back to find out why. I was told that the company had been less than fully responsive to a request for more Kosher meals. We’d agreed to supply three Kosher meals a week, which, from the vantage point of the university was meager in the extreme. Even part-time Kosher people need more than that.”

Landel is not just talk, he has clear, concrete goals. He fully intends moving the dial on diversity at Sodexho. For example, he is significantly increasing the number of women in top ranks over the next three years.

Landel exemplifies a new breed of European CEO, one who is unafraid to take on board some of the best elements in American-style talent management practices to succeed in a fiercely competitive global marketplace. His French/German/Italian counterparts have much to learn here.

What are you doing to further your company's diversity and inclusion agenda?

Read all of Sylvia Ann Hewlett's "Winning the Talent War" posts.