There seems to be a trend lately when discussing women in the work place to only focus on the needs/issues of women in professional/managerial positions or those with such aspirations. While the study points out definite problems with the perception of women in managerial positions, why isn't a Broadsheeter looking out for support staff / pink collar women? I am a receptionist. Why doesn't the author only worry about discrimination against women at the managerial/professional level? Why is it okay for the general public to think it is okay if the receptionist is dressed in a provocative / slutty manner? Is it because we are all stupid anyway? Why not be slutty as well? I am a proud pink collar worker AND I have a Master's Degree AND I use my extra time between phone calls reading Salon. I do not wear short skirts to work nor do I find that appropriate in the office place. Can Broadsheet please look out for women who aren't corporate ladder climbers too???

If a man tries to seduce all his female bosses and associates into giving him special treatment that's exactly what he will get, but not the kind he wants. It's the same reason parents care more if their daughters fuck around than if their sons do, the practical consequences to the parents are different. There are real issues of gender fairness but until the real reasons for them are dealt with rather than treating everything you don't like as a malevolent conspiracy you won't get far in solving them. Assuming a solution and not total victory/unconditional surrender is what is wanted. If that is the case I hope you have better luck than me talking them out of it.

"We're still stuck with the same old damned if you do, yada yada: Advertising and social cues pressure women to live up to a particular ideal of hotness, but doing so hurts our professional credibility in most industries."

I know, I know... advertising and social cues encourage me to spend huge amounts of money on consumer goods, but doing so hurts my credit rating.

If a woman wants to be "provocatively dressed" in the office, perhaps she should ask herself why.

Quite a few years ago the book, Dress for Success, asserted that a man's appearance had a critical impact on his success. The colors of his shirt, tie, and suit, the length and width of his tie, the color and type of coat, the color and type of shoes, hairstyle and glasses style, all had immediate impact on the people he met. The viewers judged him immediately as either a professional or a gofer, competent or schlock, trustworthy or shyster, and treated him accordingly.

The experiments the author conducted to determine which variable caused which result are interesting.

All of us have prejudices and stereotypes about everybody else, not just about women or people of color or people with accents or kids or elders or .... Our expectations are different for each group. We all have them. We all perpetuate them. We all are recipients of them. Our lives are both complicated and simplified by them.

Acting like victims doesn't usually empower people or free them from suffering.

People tend to reduce women's clothes to "sexy" or "not" but really what's going on here is the subtle ways professional hierarchy is expressed, and this is true of men AND women. People at the top of the hierarchy tend to dress more formally, and sex really is secondary to this, since "Sexy" is totally subjective anyway.

is a perfectly objective proof of the fact of innate differences between the sexes. No male would be neurologically capable of genuinely believeing this.

Sorry djbollman, but you're wrong. I'm definitely a male and I can definitely state that sexiness is a subjective matter. I find no appeal in what is deemed mainstream sexy - supermodels, porn actress, and pop divas. That artificial "beauty" just doesn't do it for me. Sure, it works for a lot of guys, and many of those same guys believe that it's the same for every other male. But some of that is social programming, and some of that is the male desire to "have" a woman that (they think) all other males will be jealous of.

Simply put, anyone who thinks there is one standard of sexiness or beauty is a dupe, guided by mainstream pressures into thinking this is an absolute instead of a relative. In reality, one's perception of sexy is as individualistic as one's taste in music or foods. And in that way both genders are alike.

Not hardly. The article states "A man in a powerful position is generally regarded as inherently sexy, and that sexiness is not viewed as provocative or in conflict with his professional responsibilities." In what office is the author working??? I can state with 100% certainty that the uppper management in my East Coast banking company are NOT SEXY. On a whole, they are middle aged, grey-haired, mostly bald, out of shape white guys. Nothing that would stand out and scream hottie, and I'd really want to poke my eyes out if any one of them came into the office shirtless or (God forbid) in leather pants.

other strains of evidence that most of the basic features of female attractiveness are universally recognized and judged the same by males. This doesn't mean that there is never any variation of any kind of course, but the evidence is there if you're interested.