A study that appeared in a 2008 issue of Psychological Science found that people who displayed anger in the workplace were regarded as more competent and had higher status than those who were emotionally neutral.

In the study, 180 study participants (70 men and 110 women) watched one of eight videos of job interviews and were asked to rate their perceptions of the job candidate. At the beginning of the videoed interviews, the job candidate provided their occupation. In some, the candidates said they were chief executives while in others they claimed to be lowly assistant trainees. During the course of the interview, the job candidate was asked about an incident in which they and a colleague had lost an important account.

Some job candidates affected to be angry about losing the account. In others, the matter of the lost account was raised, but the job candidate was not asked to expand on how they felt about it, and so remained emotionally neutral.

After watching the interviews, the 180 people were asked to rank the interview candidates’ competence, their status, their salary and whether they regarded the person as “in control” or “out of control”. While angry CEOs were judged to earn less than their emotionally neutral peers ($US66,434 versus $US82,368), they were regarded as having higher status and to be more competent than CEOs who showed no emotion.

And the perceptions of competence and high status weren’t confined to CEOs. It turns out that anger can even work in favour of more junior workers. Angry assistant trainees were also regarded as having higher status and to be slightly more competent than assistant trainees who showed no emotion.

Some psychologists suggest that those who display anger are perceived by others to possess special insights and knowledge about particular matters or issues. Since people often express anger when things go wrong, angry people are perceived as having a keen nose for when things are amiss.

As Larissa Tiedens puts it in a 2001 article that appeared in the Journal of Personality and Psychology, “Expressions of anger create the perception that the expresser is competent, and status is conferred on the basis of perceived competence”.

There’s just one catch: anger only increases the appearance of competence and status if you’re a man. If you’re a woman, showing that you’re angry is likely to dent other people’s estimations of your abilities.

In fact, in the study of videoed interviews, the female assistant trainees who were emotionally neutral throughout the job interviews were perceived to earn more than the angry female CEOs. Female assistant trainees who showed no emotion were judged to earn $56,318 per year, compared to angry female CEOs who were judged to earn just $42,526 per year.

To some extent, women can reduce negative perceptions of anger if they give reasons about why they are angry. If a woman makes clear that her anger stems from another person’s incompetence, for example, then others are more accepting of her display of anger.

To read “Being Angry at Work” in full, click here.

Last year Daniel Tosh told a female comedy fan to “get raped” after she interrupted his open mic set. Within hours, the Internet floodgates opened and an (often vitriolic) debate about rape culture broke out. Thousands of commenters, Twitter users, feminists and comedians shouted at each other and over each other, attempting to figure out how joking about sexual assault fits into the daunting monolith of rape culture.

Hearts were broken when the beloved and notably articulate comedian Patton Oswalt came out on Tosh’s side of the debate. In response to the controversy, he tweeted: “Wow, @danieltosh had to apologize to a self-aggrandizing, idiotic blogger. Hope I never have to do that (again).”

However, after a year of reflection and a smart Salon piece that pointed out his and fellow comedians’ “double standard” of actively condemning violence (like the Boston bombing) but not rape, Oswalt has officially changed his mind.

In a long essay posted to his personal blog over the weekend, Oswalt tackles the seemingly unrelated (at first glance, anyway) topics of rape jokes, joke thievery, and heckling. He writes about how he never really believed in rape culture and scoffed at the idea of comedians participating in it. He saw the rape joke backlash and Tosh’s subsequent apology as a form of comedy censorship, something he would never support. And while he still doesn’t support censorship, other beliefs have changed: “I had my viewpoint, and it was based on solid experience, and it … was … fucking … wrong.”

As Oswalt writes, no one — not even the “feminazis” — is trying to censor rape jokes, per say, but rather restructure them. “In fact, every viewpoint I’ve read on this, especially from feminists, is simply asking to kick upward, to think twice about who is the target of the punchline, and make sure it isn’t the victim,” he reasons.

He notes that just because he isn’t personally affected by rape jokes doesn’t mean that everyone experiences or perceives culture in the same way:

[Image via]

Weak handshakes

Have you ever held a dead fish before? I haven’t, either. But I envision it feeling cold, sometimes clammy and always limp.

That’s a lot like what a weak handshake feels like.

But the fact that it feels like a dead fish isn’t the main issue — sure, it’s gross, but it’s definitely something that everyone can get past at some point. The main problem is that weak handshakes can exhibit low levels of engagement, poor communication skills and some degree of apathy. To ensure that you’re always showing people you’re on top of your game, give a firm, quick handshake and you’ll be good to go.

[More from Manilla.com: Manilla Mini: 5 Ways to Be More Productive at Work]

Spamming everyone in your office

To avoid annoying all of your co-workers, only hit “reply all” on an email chain when it’s absolutely necessary. An example of when you should “reply all” would be if there’s an important ongoing group conversation about a client where everyone needs to see your input. An example of when you should not “reply all” would be if someone is scheduling a meeting with 10 different people and you respond to everyone on the thread with, “Works for me!” Once that happens, here’s what the rest of the chain will look like:

“Me too!”

“Sounds good!”

“Works for me.”

“That works.”

“I can do that time.”

“Can we look at Tuesday?”

“I can’t do Tuesday.”

“Sorry, I meant Wednesday.”

And so on.

In this case, the best thing to do would be to reply only to the person scheduling so that she can compile the times that work best for everyone. She’ll then send a confirmation email letting everyone know of the time, which will create two basic emails (one for the initial scheduling, then one for the confirmation) instead of 20 (literally).

Also, when it comes to “circling back” on an issue that your co-worker hasn’t responded to, wait at least a few days before following up. Chances are, your co-worker is thinking of how best to answer the email, and constantly probing her for a response is not the way to get the reply you want.

[More from Manilla.com: Wasting Time Online (and How to Avoid It)]

Not responding to emails

And while we’re talking about the frequency of sending emails, don’t be the person who doesn’t respond at all. It’s not always necessary to respond to an email, but a basic confirm of receipt is often appreciated.

Improper introductions

Yes, there is a wrong way to make introductions, so try to avoid it. The right way to do it is like this: When making an introduction, it’s appropriate to introduce the more junior person to the more senior person. For example, if a former manager-level co-worker Lauren Smith would like an introduction to your former CEO-level boss Pam Jones, you would say, “Pam, I’d like you to meet Lauren Smith.” This goes for email and in-person introductions.

Also, in the case of email, if you’re the one getting the introduction, move the introducer to BCC to avoid the aforementioned unnecessary spamming.

[More from Manilla.com: Bad Work Habits You Didn’t Know You Have]

Getting drunk at office parties

Don’t do this! Sure, you have co-workers you’re close with or even consider your friends, but having one too many drinks in front of your boss shows lack of control and overall poor judgment. To avoid an embarrassing situation that you will not be able to undo, have no more than three drinks (and even fewer if you know you can’t handle it).

Being late

We’re all late sometimes. When it happens rarely and for good reason, it’s nothing to lose sleep over. But avoid being chronically late to your desk, to meetings, to lunches, and in general because it will reflect poorly on you. And trust me — your boss will notice.

Being lazy

One of the least attractive qualities in an employee or co-worker is laziness. Do your job, and do it well. Be proactive, be a go-getter, and show your boss and your co-workers that you’re someone they can count on. The best way to do this is find what motivates you so that you always feel challenged and so that you want to do good work.

Sarah Kaufman is the editor-in-chief of the Manilla Blog and marketing manager at Manilla.com, the leading, free and secure service that helps consumers to simplify and organize their daily lives. Using just one password, customers can manage their finances, utilities, daily deals, travel and rewards programs, Netflix and magazine subscriptions, OpenTable reservations, and more — all through Manilla.com or the 4+ star customer-rated iOS and Android mobile apps. For more career tips, visit the Manilla Blog.

You can always count on The Real Housewives of Atlanta‘s NeNe Leakes to ask the hard-hitting questions. In the Q&A round of the pageant, Leakes quizzed Marissa Powell, Miss Utah, on the wage gap, asking, “a recent  report shows that in 40 percent of American families with children, women are the primary earners, yet they continue to earn less than men. What does this say about society?”

Woo, toughie. Okay. You can do this, Marissa. You read Lean In, right? No? Okay, that’s alright, just speak from your heart. You’re a woman so surely you can articulate some sense of oppression, even if you’ve just witnessed it as opposed to experienced it. Do it for Utah. They’re waiting for an answer, so you’d better say something…

Every Monday, we’ll be asking the question “Who had the worst day at work on

Rodger didn’t have the worst day at work since any day that isn’t the day that you held Lee Garner Jr.’s balls is a good one.

It wasn’t Ginsberg, even though it was impossible for him to receive any positive feedback from Ted since he wasn’t Peggy (still isn’t, as far as I know). At least Ginz was able to fake a bathroom break and successfully relieved himself (eh? eh?) of the goo-goo-eyed pair…

That’s more than I can say for Joan, who was trapped in the conference room with Peggy and Ted’s sexual tension for god knows how long. While that must’ve been a bummer (and it clearly was: note the irritation etched onto Joan’s face), her impression of a Jewish Yenta was the best thing I’ve seen all month.

Pete didn’t have the worst day at work either. Actually, things are kinda-sorta-kinda looking up for Campbell, so hopefully his hairline will finally come out of hiding. After involving headhunter Duck Philips in his attempt to lure that knee-crazy Bob Benson away from the firm, Pete discovered some valuable information: Bob Benson isn’t who he says he is because Bob Benson isn’t anyone. Bob Benson is the fake name of a very real and very devious account man in SC&P who once worked as a “manservant” to the senior vice president of Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. Campbell took this atomic bomb of knowledge and…didn’t really do anything with it, which was the best thing he could’ve done. Pete has wrangled with this kind of animal before; if Bob is pulling a Dick Whitman, Pete knows he’s better off just staying mum and reaping the benefits of Bob’s climb. So far staying silent has already worked in Pete’s favor: he finally got what he wanted in that he inherited the Chevy account, Bob Benson the Fighter is neutered, Bob Benson the Lover promised no more knee touches, and Manolo the “Deviant” will leave Mrs. Campbell alone. All in all, not a bad day for ol’ Humps.

While Bob Benson (or whatever his real name is) didn’t have the worst day at work, he certainly didn’t have a good one. I can’t imagine that being called out on one’s elaborate deception makes for an enjoyable afternoon but Bob should look on the bright side: he still has a job, his lie is still intact, and he still has his How To Succeed At Business Without Really Trying record. Bob was the recipient of Pete Campbell’s mercy (who knew Pete Campbell even had a merciful side!) and/or exhausted surrender which means that this invented man gets to scheme another day.

It wasn’t Peggy, though we do feel bad for the girl. Sure, she got to spend some blissful hours canoodling with her boss/crush in the office and a darkened movie theater and she did manage to score a bigger budget for her masterful St. Joseph’s Aspirin ad, BUT AT WHAT COST?! The innocent days of Chaoughin’ lovin’ are over (thnx, DON) and her shot at winning a CLIO no longer stands since Frank Gleason (R.I.P) got credit for her idea. (Again — thnx, DON.)

Surprisingly it wasn’t even Peggy’s partner in flirtation, Ted Cahough. He may have lost his two loves — Ocean Spray and Peggy — at the hands of Draper this week but he did get to spend most of the episode lost in blissful giggles with the latter love, so that has to count for something, right?

Don woke up looking terrible, was told by his ex-wife that his daughter doesn’t want to visit him, got called a monster by his former protégé Peggy so that now he has lost the admiration of his work daughter (if you will) as well as biological daughter, and goes to sleep looking terrible. How did Don, that motherf#*&ing monster, end the episode literally tucked into a fetal position and still not have the worst day at work?

Well, that’s because the honor went to a man who keeps returning to SC&P headquarters one body part lighter. This time Ken staggered back from Detroit down an eye; you see, poor Mr. Cosgrove was shot in the face by Chevy muckily mucks during a hunting trip gone awry. Thanks to “fat yahoos in cheap suits,” Ken was forced to walk around the office with an eyepatch and some uncomely facial scars. Sure, Ken didn’t die and that’s great, but isn’t being routinely made fun of by Rodger Sterling a bit like dying?

Nancy Folbre at the New York Times has a formulaic theory for why we marry the people we marry which might upset those who are holding out for their soulmate. According to Folbre, it all comes down to supply and demand.

“As a contractual commitment, marriage has a price,” she writes. “It offers both costs and benefits to potential partners.” These costs include not only financial contributions to the family, but also domestic responsibilities and child care.

Women are willing to pay a higher price for marriage than men if they have few alternatives, i.e. when they depend on a partner for financial support. An increase in the supply of women who want to marry drives the “price of marriage” down for men.

However, if the supply of women who want to marry decreases, women tend to have the advantage: they are more likely to receive a larger share of joint income and leisure time and husbands are more likely to help around the house and give up some of their decision-making power.

According to Folbre, marriage market dynamics mean that a woman’s bargaining power is partly determined by the number of other choices her potential husband has (and vice versa). A recent poll of Black singles of prime marrying age found that only 25 percent of women were seeking a long-term relationship compared with 43 percent of men. This defies the stereotype that women are constantly on the “Husband Hunt” and is advantageous to women who do want to get married since there are fewer women for them to compete with.

The dynamic also shifts in a woman’s favor when she is in a higher economic position — which is becoming increasingly common. While social norms make most men wary of sharing financial responsibility with high-earning women, the allure of traditional gender roles changes with class and education. A power struggle may not be necessary in affluent households since a moneyed couple afford to hire others to take care of the domestic responsibilities such as childcare. Those with higher education are also more likely to stray from the typical husband-wife social norms.

The demand for long-term commitments seems to be steadily declining and, as we adapt to a world in which fewer adults marry, those in the market for life-long partners might be in distress, but, as Folbre points out, men and women with a grasp on how this supply and demand theory works might find themselves at an advantage.

We’re here to help. Each week we will supply you with a free and streamable office playlist (consider us your John Williams and your workday our Harry Potter); these are the Jane Dough-approved tunes that’ll wake you up, keep you focused, soothe your nerves, and help you celebrate the end of day. So put in your earbuds and drown out the sound of your co-worker drumming his fingers on his desk. Why be working when you could be (T)Workin’? Previous installments can be found here. To listen to today’s playlist as a continuous stream, just click here.

8:30 – 9:00: You don’t think you’ve ever seen this many emails in one place. You go away for one weekend and it’s like every person in your address book had decided to reach out as soon as you stepped out of your door. Ugh. You’re going to be deleting and replying forever.
HAIM, “Forever”

9:00 – 12:00: Your lunch just exploded in your bag. Who knew that couscous and a salad could make such a mess? This is why you don’t cook.

Cut Copy, “Hearts on Fire”
Miami Horror, “Holidays”
Neon Indian, “Polish Girl”
Ghost Beach, “Empty Streets”
BOY, “Little Numbers”

12:00: F*#k it, you’re buying yourself a sammich.

Yeasayer, “Ambling Alp”

1:00 – 3:00: Your autobiography will be called Getting Hit On By Bodega Men: A Very True Story. Nothing pairs well with a stressful day quite like sexual harassment. You’re going to stand and talk to your office bud forever because that’s what you need right now & you don’t curr.

Grizzly Bear, “Two Weeks”
Black Moth Super Rainbow, “Forever Heavy”
Deerhunter, “Helicopter”
Akron/Family, “Running, Returning”
Dirty Projectors, “About to Die”

3:00 – 6:00: One of the new interns is incredibly stylish. She’s wearing something that you can only describe as velvet culottes and she looks incredibly fabulous. How does that even work? Damn it, now you have to go shopping this weekend.

Panda Bear, “Comfy in Nautica”
James Blake, “Retrograde”
Robin Thicke, “Wanna Love You Girl (Kaytranada Remix)”
Bonobo, “Jets”
Schlomo feat. Jeremih, “Bo Peep”

6:00: You are standing in the elevator with Zach Braff. Why is Zach Braff in your building? Why is he taking up all the elevator space with his bike? Oh, Zach Braff just complimented you on your “statement necklace.” Zach Braff called it a “statement necklace.” You know, Garden State isn’t all that bad…

New Order, “Bizarre Love Triangle“

For instance, only 20 of the Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Women hold only 14% of executive positions, and just 16% of board seats. Women earn $0.77 for every dollar earned by men.

But with all the discussions about how to get more women in the upper echelons of the business world (thanks, Ms. Sandberg!), we wanted to hear some real-life stories of leaning in.

We spoke with five all-star women who have succeeded in traditionally male-dominated industries to hear their stories of climbing the mountain—and maybe glean some advice from how they made it to the top.

The Engineer

Karen Purcell, 45

Title: President of PK Electrical
Location: Reno, Nevada
Degrees: BSEE, Electrical Engineering, Widener University

Why I Chose This Field: Growing up, I always liked math and science, but I hadn’t thought about a career in engineering until my high school physics teacher suggested I consider it. At the time, I wasn’t even really sure what an engineer did. When I asked that question, his response was simple: “Well, they can do anything.”

I made it my major and fell in love with engineering from day one. I’m now the president of PK Electrical, an electrical engineering, design and consulting firm—and the author of “Unlocking Your Brilliance,” which explores the hurdles women face in the male-dominated STEM fields and offers pragmatic strategies to overcome them.

Biggest Hurdle in My Career: When I first started going to job sites, out there with the contractors, everyone assumed I was the assistant—not the engineer.  But once I opened my mouth, they realized, “Oh, she’s intelligent. She’s the engineer!” I felt like I always had to prove myself. It took about two years for people to believe in me. As a woman, you really have to go above and beyond to prove your value, while a lot of men just get that automatically.

The Best Get-Ahead Tip I Have: One of my best pieces of advice to women is to ensure you’re being heard. Sometimes, when you’re sitting in a meeting or conference, the men can be very overpowering. You need to stand up and be vocal. This can take practice sometimes. Try joining activities where you can practice having a voice in a safe zone. Getting comfortable with your own voice will help give you professional confidence.

The Military Woman

Jill Morgenthaler, 59

Title:  Retired Army Colonel and Homeland Security Consultant
Location: Chicago
Degrees: B.A. Economics, Penn State; M.A. International Policy Studies, Monterey Institute of International Studies; Masters of Strategic Studies, Army War College

Why I Chose This Field: Growing up, I watched my father, a career marine officer, lead a very exciting life. I wanted that. When I joined the ROTC in 1972, I was a part of the first class that allowed women. For the first time, they were asking the question: Can women train as equals with men? This was one of the many “firsts” in my career.

How Being a Woman Has Affected Me: There were plenty of men who hated the idea of women in the military and tried to stop me from doing my job. I’d learned a lot from my father about how soldiers should treat one another and conduct themselves, so any time I was in a situation where I wasn’t being treated correctly, I pointed it out. If a male soldier decided not to listen, saying, “I don’t care what a woman says,” I’d reply, “Me neither—I care what an officer says!” I’d bring the focus back to respect for the title, not gender.

How Humor Helped Me Over Hurdles: I also used humor to gain my comrade’s respect. If a male soldier refused to salute me, I’d respond, “Oh my gosh, you’ve forgotten how to salute!” then make him salute me for 15 minutes straight. Sure, it was a bit dramatic, but by using humor, I was able to make a strong point that no one soon forgot.

The Best Get Ahead Tip I Have: I have a motto I like: “Times are tough. I am tougher.” As a voracious reader of English and Latin mythology, the theme of the hero’s journey always resonated with me. Remember that you’re there to do a job and you’re facing these challenges for a reason. Knowing that will get you through the tough times. You’ll look back in a few years and know that you had to be tested to get to where you are now—that’s why they call it a hero’s journey.

The Sports Agent

MJ Pedone, 43

Title: C.E.O. of Indra Public Relations
Location: New York City
Degrees: Studied marketing, but fell short of my degree when I left school to pursue some modeling opportunities overseas.

Why I Chose This Field: Athletics have always been a huge part of my life. I’ve always been a sports fan, and my family and siblings were die-hards! My sister and I were considered tomboys growing up—we played everything: softball, swimming, tennis and skiing. I also grew up with the arts, teaching tap, jazz and gymnastics. Going into sports and entertainment PR allowed me to follow my interests.

Biggest Hurdle in My Career: As a woman breaking into the male-dominated sports industry, the biggest hurdle I had to overcome was shutting out the naysayers. Once, a male C.E.O. was unhappy that I’d pulled off an event with the New York Rangers that he’d been trying, unsuccessfully, to do for a long while. He started spreading rumors that I’d hired actors who looked like the athletes to do the appearance, which was a complete lie.

The situation was easily mitigated since I wasn’t doing anything dishonest, but I knew that this was just the first of many obstacles—I knew I had to stay as focused and determined as possible and face all challenges head-on, with a strong mind.

How Being a Woman Has Affected Me: Men and women sometimes handle situations differently. I’ve witnessed first-hand the many insecurities and struggles that men face, especially athletes. They’re more egotistical than women, and sometimes tend not to make logical decisions.

Women process things differently, with a more rational view of the situation. We tend to think before we react, and this has been an advantage. My ability to deal with tough situations with confidence and grace has earned respect not only from the athletes, but from other agents, publicists and high-level executives with whom I interact on a daily basis.

The Best Get-Ahead Tip I Have: My best piece of advice to women is to be confident, work diligently and get as much on-the-job experience as you can. I can’t stress confidence enough. Also: Love what you do—then you don’t mind all the hours you spend working.

The Finance C.E.O.

Elle Kaplan, 36

Title: C.E.O. & Founding Partner, Lexion Capital Management
Location: New York City
Degrees: B.A. English and B.A. Chemistry, University of Michigan; Executive M.B.A. in Finance, Columbia University

Why I Chose This Field: My mom, though a genius in many ways, was financially overwhelmed when my father got sick. I was in college and wanted to help, but didn’t know how. I was studying English and Chemistry at the University of Michigan, but I realized that I wanted to do something that would help people like my mom.

Biggest Hurdle in My Career: I came to New York after college with just $200, no job and a dream of working on Wall Street. I had no connections and no formal finance training. Through tenacity and drive, I landed an entry-level analyst position. I was an honors student in both qualitative and quantitative endeavors, and I made sure to highlight that in my interviews. I spoke about myself with confidence, and therefore other people had confidence in me too. Once you land a job, it’s binary: You either learn and do, or you’re out. The latter was not an option! I spent the next decade working my way up “the Street,” learning everything I could.

In 2010 I founded a private bank, Lexion Capital Management, dedicated to helping hard-working people safeguard and grow their assets, even if they may not know much—or anything—about asset management. Before making any decision or taking any action, I always ask myself, “Is this advice good enough for my mom?”

How Being a Woman Has Affected Me: Being a female in the private equity space makes me feel responsible for serving as an example for younger women. I hope to inspire more women and girls to pursue finance as a career. I want them to see me and think, “If she can do it, I can do it, too.” One great way to change the future of finance is to provide younger women with visible female role models in the finance space. As a woman on Wall Street, you’re constantly in a fishbowl. For more than 10 years, I was the only woman in the conference room, but now I’m the C.E.O. of my own firm.

The Best Get-Ahead Tip I Have: While it may be a cliche, my biggest get-ahead tip is to believe in your own success. You have to be your own cheerleader—no one can advocate for you or make it happen like you can.

The TV Exec

Jodi Markley, 47

Title: Senior Vice President of Operations at ESPN
Location: Bristol, Conn.
Degrees: B.A. Communications, University of South Florida; Simmons School of Executive Graduate Studies

Why I Chose This Field: Growing up, I played a lot of sports, enjoyed learning languages and loved—much to my parent’s chagrin—watching TV. So when I started working at ESPN International in 1989, one year after joining the network in operations control, it was everything I wanted wrapped in a bow!

Biggest Hurdle in My Career: Learning to come to terms with the fact that not every project was going to be a win was one of the biggest challenges of my career. Some projects, no matter how hard you work on them, still may fail. When you fail—and you will—use it as a learning experience and move on.

How Being a Woman Has Affected Me: We’re all trying to balance our personal and professional lives on a daily basis, and some days are better than others. In the early days, when I was traveling internationally, I was away from my children more than I would have liked. But I developed a way to handle it: Before I went on a trip, I would show them where I was going on a map and bring them back a small gift from that country—that way they were part of the adventure. They would bring the gifts to school for “Show and Tell.”

The Best Get-Ahead Tip I Have: I eventually ended up leading all of ESPN International’s production and operations and am now ESPN’s S.V.P. of Operations, but I didn’t start there. It took a lot of work, and one thing I think is crucial to professional success is to learn as much as you can as your responsibilities grow. Not every aspect of every role is going to be absolutely thrilling, but it will make you a better manager and leader, so make sure to learn as you grow.

It’s also important to have mentors, both inside your industry and outside, whom you can get advice from and bounce ideas off. Your “Board of Directors”: the people you know who will take your call and for whom you’ll do the same.

And, most important, make sure to always take yourself seriously. Otherwise, no one else will. Recognize that you matter and what you say matters. Speak up and get your ideas heard.

This post originally appeared on LearnVest. It has been republished with permission.

Eesha Khare, the 18-year-old winner of the 2013 Young Scientist Award, was interviewed on Conan last week to talk about her latest invention that has a super long, fancy, science-y name that I can’t even be bothered to type out, let alone understand. The interview itself is hilarious, and we’re super thrilled that Conan O’Brien is bringing some non-celebrities on his late-night show so that this talented young woman can get the recognition she deserves. As one YouTube commenter pointed out, O’Brien himself went to Harvard but “he just acts a little stupid sometimes [on his show] so we hobbits can relate.”

I want to stress this again: In many, many parts of the country right now, if you want to go to see a movie in the theater and see a current movie about a woman — any story about any woman that isn’t a documentary or a cartoon — you can’t. You cannot. There are not any. You cannot take yourself to one, take your friend to one, take your daughter to one.

There are not any.

By far your best shot, numbers-wise, at finding one that’s at least even-handedly featuring a man and a woman is Before Midnight (on 891 screens) so I hope you like it. Because it’s pretty much that or a solid, impenetrable wall of movies about dudes.

Dudes in capes, dudes in cars, dudes in space, dudes drinking, dudes smoking, dudes doing magic tricks, dudes being funny, dudes being dramatic, dudes flying through the air, dudes blowing up, dudes getting killed, dudes saving and kissing women and children, and dudes glowering at each other.

Somebody asked me this morning what “the women” are going to do about this. I don’t know. I honestly am at the point where I have no idea what to do about it. Stop going to the movies? Boycott everything?

They put up Bridesmaids, we went. They put up Pitch Perfect, we went. They put up The Devil Wears Prada, which was in two-thousand-meryl-streeping-oh-six, and we went (and by “we,” I do not just mean women; I mean we, the humans), and all of it has led right here, right to this place. Right to the land of zippedy-doo-dah. You can apparently make an endless collection of high-priced action flops and everybody says “win some, lose some” and nobody decides that They Are Poison, but it feels like every “surprise success” about women is an anomaly and every failure is an abject lesson about how we really ought to just leave it all to The Rock.

Nobody remembers, it seems, how many people said Bridesmaids would fail. And it didn’t! But it didn’t matter.

To read “At The Movies, The Women Are Gone” in full, click here.

In honor of Father’s Day, TIME assembled a team of famous fathers to write open letters to their daughters. These letters were mostly sweet, albeit a bit boring, but Brokaw’s letter, as Gawker’s Caity Weaver wrote, is “a passive-aggressive master class in embarrassment.”

Brokaw starts out by telling his daughters how happy and proud he is to be their father and encouraging them to reach out to families without a father-figure this Father’s Day.

Then it gets to the UGH YOU’RE SO EMBARRASSING! part of the letter. First up is Brokaw’s daughter Andrea:

Andrea, did I yell when you left the keys to the family car on a back tire in the Bronx and it was promptly stolen? Maybe I would have been angrier had it not been just as promptly recovered.

Then it’s Sarah:

Sarah, we’ll always have that New Year’s Eve where I encountered your boyfriend walking through our house, drinking my precious magnum of Dom Perignon straight from the bottle.

And then it’s every daughter everywhere:

As you know, I grew up in a testosterone-fueled family of three boys with a construction foreman father, and not even my saintly mother could adequately convey the complexities of coming of age as a girl-woman.

The physical changes, the onset of menstruation, the attitude of adolescent boys, the hair, the cosmetics, the shoes (!)—and then, the greatest gift of all, pregnancy and birth.

Yup, there it is. He talked about their periods. In case the Bronx car theft and boyfriend liquor theft weren’t enough to make you cringe with empathy. Maybe this is okay since his daughters are all grown up and the statute of limitations on probably actually literally dying of embarrassment has passed, BUT STILL. This just seems like one more reason to never teach your dad how to do complex things on the Internet, lest he start a blog dedicated to sharing your totally cringe-worthy stories with the world.

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Everyone seems to have an opinion on this debate including the Dalai Lama who (thankfully) came out on the side of the ladies. He even said that his successor as the Tibetan spiritual leader could be a woman.

“…Biologically, females have more potential,” he said. “Females have more sensitivity about others’ wellbeing … In my own case, my father, very short temper. On a few occasions I also got some beatings. But my mother was so wonderfully compassionate. If the circumstances are such that a female Dalai Lama is more useful, then automatically a female Dalai Lama will come.”

While I appreciate the sentiment (I guess), I don’t think “females have more sensitivity” is an accurate blanket statement. After all, as The Atlantic pointed out, there have been conflicting studies as to whether women actually are the more compassionate sex. We should advocate for more female leaders because it’s fair, not because we’re nicer. But hey, after a rough week, I’m fine with just taking the Dalai Lama’s words as a compliment. Thanks, Dalai Lama!

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In the interview Stratigakos discusses the status of women in architecture and how far we are from achieving parity in the industry. While, as Stratigakos points out, gender narratives are changing in academia and architecture firms, the community still suffers from a lack of diversity, perhaps more so than other famously male-dominated professions. Feminism and architecture is Stratigakos’ bread and butter. That’s where she eats. After curating an exhibition on gendered stereotypes within the architecture industry, Stratigakos helped Mattel develop and launch Architect Barbie. She is also the Deputy Director of the University of Buffalo’s Gender Institute and award-winning author of A Women’s Berlin: Building the Modern City. So, when Stratigakos talks about women in architecture, the world better listen.

When asked about what she believes are the biggest issues facing female architects today, Stratigakos speaks to the need for a supportive professional community, advice that’s applicable for any working woman:

Both the first and second waves of feminism understood the importance of community in fostering the progress of women collectively and individually. OWA, an organization of women architects based in San Francisco, just celebrated its fortieth anniversary. Groups such as this helped to anchor women in the profession at a tenuous time, providing information and advice, fostering professional connections, and giving the support to persevere with their careers. The 1980s, the era of Reagan and Thatcher, brought a shift in attitudes and an emphasis on individual achievement; it was seen as a weakness to need anything beyond your own talents or the support of a spouse and family members. It is surely not a coincidence that as we began to rely on lone individuals to take on gender equality in the profession, we also saw that progress begin to level out. Although women’s enrollment in architecture programs has climbed slowly in the past few decades, the number of female graduates becoming licensed practitioners has flatlined since the mid-1980s. We are now seeing a return to community-making among younger women architects and an appreciation for the support such networks bring, not just professionally, but also personally. Using technologies not available in the 1970s, some of these communities have formed online, such as Archiparlour. The 2012 feminist roundtables at the Van Alen Institute have also spurred explorations of both physical and virtual communities of support for aspiring women architects.

Later, she discusses her work with Architect Barbie and the importance of addressing “the politics of the sandbox”:

I cannot overstate the importance of women architects mentoring young girls. At the Architect Barbie launch in New Orleans in 2011, we ran architecture workshops for about 400 local girls. Some of them expressed shock that women could be architects—they had no clue and were delighted to realize it was an option. When our speakers, women architects, told their stories about how they had discovered architecture as girls and the buildings they had gone on to create, you could hear a pin drop. Many school programs offer opportunities to run workshops or interact with young people and I would encourage women architects to get involved. As the saying goes, “You can’t be what you can’t see.” When a girl encounters a woman architect and hears about her love of building, it can radically change her ideas about what is possible. Sometimes those attitudes are easier to shift than you would think, but it does require exposure to an alternate reality.

To read the entire interview (which I believe you should), click here.

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Lieutenant Morrison’s message was recorded on the Australian army’s official YouTube account in response to an ongoing investigation into the distribution of “explicit emails and photos” circulated by at least 17 service members, including officers, with the intent to humiliate female soldiers.

“I will be ruthless in rooting the army of people who cannot live up to its values,” he says, “and I need everyone of you to support me in achieving this. The standard you walk past is the standard you accept.”

Hopefully his stern, unblinking eyes and ruthlessly badass logic will scare some sense into assaulters and legislators across the globe.

Today’s Morning Laugh comes to you from our new favorite Tumblr “Kanye Wes” which pairs the immortal words of ‘Ye with the color-saturated dreamy enchantment of Wes Anderson movies. How do the two antipodal aesthetics work together so perfectly, so wonderfully? I don’t know…perhaps because, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. Or perhaps because the weirdest combinations always work. (Take pineapple pizza for example.) I don’t know, I’m not a scientist. Stop asking so many questions and just accept the glory that is Kanye Wes.

For more Kanye Wes, click here.

Though S. is not part of Foster’s turnaway study, she is in many ways typical. The same month that she realized she would be having her baby, she was confronted with a host of financial hurdles. She couldn’t move in with her parents because they’d lost their home to foreclosure. By late March, S., exhausted by the pregnancy, had stopped working. Everyone moved into her older sister’s house — a three-bedroom, one-bathroom — where now seven people would be living. There was a family meeting. S. and her baby would take one room; her sister’s daughter would move into the small playroom; the parents would move into the garage. Their parents brought 20 years of belongings with them; S. sold, gave away or threw out everything she could but brought her parrot and her dog.

S., who had never seriously considered adoption, was overwhelmed when Baby S., a healthy girl, was born in May 2012. “It was like, whoa!” S. recalled. “That first night was terrible. I was tired, and she was so hungry, and she had a very loud cry. They don’t tell you how hard it is to nurse your baby. You don’t know how painful it is for something to eat off you, and it’s pulling your skin.” She developed plugged ducts, a condition in which the breasts become painfully engorged with milk.

It’s not unusual for new mothers to have trouble breast feeding, but S. felt overwhelmed in other ways too. “This baby is such a crybaby, and I didn’t know what was going on,” she said. “I felt like she didn’t love me, like maybe she was mad at me.” S. watched bitterly as her family members held a contented Baby S. When S. held her, the baby would begin to cry. It went on like that for weeks. S. sometimes buried her head in her pillow, crying, when the baby cried. “Her tone was negative,” one of S.’s sisters remembers. “She would become angry, saying she wished the baby would shut up.”

S. wanted to be a good mother, so she kept trying to nurse even when she began to develop sores on her breasts. Perhaps because of S.’s difficulty breast-feeding, Baby S. wasn’t gaining weight. Her physician threatened to call social services. Through a federal program — Women, Infants and Children (W.I.C.) — S. found a lactation consultant, who rented her a breast pump and provided her with information on baby formula. Once she stopped breast-feeding, Baby S. began to gain weight.

One day, when Baby S. was nearly 3 months old, S. left her on a pillow at the center of her bed while she went to the bathroom. She was gone for about a minute. When she came back, Baby S. was on the floor, lying face up, whimpering softly. S. and her mother took the baby to the hospital. It turned out nothing was wrong, but like many new parents in that situation, S. was terrified. The thought of losing Baby S. made her sick. From that point on, she no longer buried herself under the pillow when her baby cried. She didn’t let Baby S. out of her sight.

S. now says that Baby S. is the best thing that ever happened to her. “She is more than my best friend, more than the love of my life,” S. told me, glowingly. There were white spit-up stains on her green top. “She is just my whole world.”

When I told Foster S.’s story, she wasn’t surprised that S. ended up bonding with her baby. “That would be consistent with our study,” Foster said. “About 5 percent of the women, after they have had the baby, still wish they hadn’t. And the rest of them adjust.” S.’s experience is also consistent with one of the most striking statistics from Henry David’s Czech study. David found that nine years after being denied abortions, 38 percent of women said they never sought one in the first place.

To read the article in full, click here.

Not only did Fredette invoke the good word of relationship counselor John Gray (PhD in the Science of Creative Intelligence from Maharishi International University in Iowa) but he also explained how it’s his “man’s brain” that stops him from supporting Medicaid expansion. You see, because Fredette has a “man brain,” he is inherently rational about costs, unlike us women with our female brains that just love buying, buying, buying and shoes, Shoes, SHOES. Since he is burdened with this logical, number-crunching man brain (it’s his albatross, really), Fredette is unable to understand the Democrats’ desire for free things.

Let’s have Fredette explain it in his own words:

As I listen to the debate today and earlier debate on this bill, I can’t help but think of a title of a book, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. And it’s a book about the fact that men sort of think one way in their own brain, in their own world. And women think another way in their own brain and in their own world. And it really talks about the way that men and women can do a better job at communicating. Because if you listen to the debate today, in my mind — a man’s mind — I hear two fundamental issues. From the other side of the aisle, I hear the conversation being about: free. ‘This is free, we need to take it, and it’s free. And we need to do it now.’ And that’s the fundamental message that my brain receives. Now, my brain, being a man’s brain, sort of thinks differently, because I say, well, it’s not — if it’s free, is it really free? Because I say, in my brain, there’s a cost to this.

Unfortunately, Fredette’s man brain was wrong; Medicaid expansion — which passed the legislature today — will save Maine $690 million. Of course, Fredette’s man brain is wrong about a lot of things, namely that there is such a thing as a “man brain.” As State Rep. Diane Russell (D-ME) quipped to ThinkProgress, “I thought it was 2013, not 1813. Apparently, I was wrong.”

If I said it once, I’ll probably have to say it a thousand more times: gender is a social phenomenon. With that said, the self/mind isn’t impermeable or stable; the gender differences that we make salient in our environment greatly effect how we think of ourselves, how we think of others, and the expectations and stereotypes that we carry with us. Social and cultural psychologists know this. This is science, Mr. Fredette.

“We have a situation where pregnant workers are being treated worse than other workers,” explained Dina Bakst, the co-founder of A Better Balance, a New York nonprofit that advocates for low-income, working families. ”[This issue] disproportionately impacts low-wage women and women in physically demanding jobs. Women don’t have a clear legal right [to a reasonable accommodation], and yet disabled workers—you know, a man could come back from a ski accident and it’s like, ‘Let me get you an ergonomically designed chair.’”

Yvette, a former manager of a grocery store bakery, spoke to Gothamist about her frustrating experience with working while pregant; due to her employer’s lack of flexibility, Yvette was forced to make sacrifices:

… A series of miscarriages… had led to the discovery of a clotting disorder. When Yvette came back to work after her first prenatal appointment, it was with a list of restrictions from her doctor: no lifting over 5lbs. and no more dragging around heavy bakery carts.

The store manager took one look at Yvette’s doctor’s note and said, “There’s no job here for you like that.”

Yvette claims that the store had accommodated employees with minor disabilities in the past. “One woman, she hurt her shoulder,” she says, angry tears filling her eyes. “They gave her a job re-shelving lighter items.” Yvette says she also offered to work at the cash register or in the office of a different branch, to no avail.

Eventually she was given meager disability payments for a portion of her pregnancy, and she spent the remainder on unpaid leave. Last month, Yvette left her job at the grocery chain.

Pregnant workers are technically protected by both the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act (PDA) and the sex and disability clauses of the New York Human Rights law. Unfortunately, these protections are rarely extended to low-income women.

“There’s a gap in protection under the law,” said Katharine Bodde, Policy Counsel at the New York Civil Liberties Union. “Courts have not interpreted the federal Pregnancy Discrimination Act to require employers to provide reasonable accommodations.”

Pregnant New Yorkers also have the option of filing a charge with the New York State Division of Human Rights but the process can take weeks or even months, by which time most women have already been forced to make accommodations or leave their jobs.

“If you’re pregnant and you want to find out if you can have a stool or an extra bathroom break, you don’t have three months to get that decision,” said Bakst.

For women in New York, though, all this may be about to change. The NY State legislature will vote on Governor Andrew Cuomo’s proposed Women’s Equality Agenda this month. While the reproductive health provisions of the legislation have received the most attention in the press, the full package is intended to directly improve life for low-income, working women, including those most likely to suffer from pregnancy discrimination.

If the law passes, employers in New York would be required to provide “a reasonable accommodation for pregnancy-related conditions unless doing so would cause an undue hardship on the employer.” These “reasonable accommodations” typically include extra bathroom breaks, a stool to sit on, or the ability to carry a water bottle around — benefits that would cost the employer little to nothing. California passed a similar law in 1999 and dramatically reduced the state’s pregnancy discrimination cases at a time when national numbers were increasing. Bakst and Bodde consider the law a change that’s great for women, employers, and an over-taxed state system.

Port

Port can’t make the argument that there are no women leading major magazines to picture or interview since there are. Quite a few, actually. As Slate’s Alyssa Rosenberg writes:

If you want to celebrate print magazines, why not feature Janice Min, who is turning the Hollywood Reporter from a dying trade into a thoughtful, glossy exploration of everything Hollywood—from legal issues and legislative fights to the creative challenges of creating prestige television—with a crackling, obsessive website to boot. What about Mother Jones‘ Monika Bauerlein and Clara Jeffery, as well as the magazine’s publisher Madeline Buckingham, three women who have demonstrated that you can publish a feisty political magazine, reignite a brand, nurture longform writers like Mac McClelland, and do it all on a nonprofit budget, a model more publications might want to consider as advertising revenues continue to dry up?* Why not talk to Elynn Russell, the president of Texas Monthly, about how state and local magazines have stayed rich, relevant, and visually gorgeous even in a recession? And while I understand the impulse to focus on print, it’s also worth lauding people who are doing innovative magazine-style work that’s primarily online, like Rachel Rosenfelt, who co-founded and edits the New Inquiry..

But it’s not just that the team behind Port forgot to include women like Anna Wintour, the artistic director of Conde Nast, or Tina Brown, of Newsweek/Daily Beast. In her open letter to the six male editors pictured on the Port cover, Ruth Franklin, book critic and contributing editor at the New Republic, points out that the article’s oversight offends and minimizes all of print’s women:

You know why I’m upset? It’s not just because there are so few women at the highest levels of magazine publishing — after all, I just reminded you that some of us have broken through that old glass ceiling. It’s because your magazines owe their success to the labor of women as well as men. Come on — we know you have at least a few women as your deputies, your managing editors, your copy chiefs, your assistants. Not to mention your writers! It’s not okay to ignore them and act like you deserve all the credit. (There might even be a few people of color somewhere in the mix, too.)

In order to right this egregious wrong, writer and editor Amy Wallace started the #WomenEdsWeLove hashtag on Twitter yesterday and it has been blowing up ever since. Check it out and be sure to add some of your own favorite ladytors!

One day during vacation, I was lying in a hotel bed with a pounding headache, angry with with myself for forgetting to bring my migraine pills and probably whimpering melodramatically about my first-world problem. My mom nonchalantly suggested I have a cup of coffee. So I did. And I instantly felt better.

I laughed at how simple the solution was. My migraines weren’t triggered by something I was consuming, they were triggered by something I wasn’t: caffeine. I was used to drinking coffee maybe five times a week during the school year — nothing too crazy but it turned out that was enough to make me dependent on it. I was getting migraines almost every day during the summer because I wasn’t regularly drinking coffee. Instead, I was sleeping in and getting my recommended eight (…or twelve) hours.

Caffeine, the working women’s fuel of choice, is now the basis of two official diagnoses in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM-5: caffeine intoxication and withdrawal. These conditions can even be considered mental disorders if they impair a person’s ability to function in daily life.

“The symptoms [of caffeine withdrawal] overlap with a lot of other disorders and medical problems,” said Laura Juliano, a psychology professor at American University who advised the DSM-5 work group. “We’ve heard many times people went to the doctor for chronic headaches or because they thought that they had the flu and it turns out it was caffeine withdrawal and they didn’t even know it.”

While caffeine intoxication was previously included as a diagnosis in the manuel, withdrawal recently got an upgrade from “research diagnosis” (meaning that the workgroup needed more time to study it) to “full diagnosis.” Also, Caffeine Use Disorder — when a person’s caffeine consumption causes troubling side effects and yet s/he isn’t able to quit — was added to the latest manual as a research diagnosis.

While the diagnoses have already been added to the latest DSM, there has been some controversy over their validity.

“Caffeine intoxication and withdrawal both occur fairly frequently but only rarely cause enough clinically significant impairment to be considered a mental disorder,” said Allen Frances, a chairman of the task force that developed the previous DSM and a vocal critic of the DSM-5. “We shouldn’t medicalize every aspect of life and turn everyone into a patient.”

To be diagnosed with caffeine withdrawal, a patient must stop or reduce caffeine intake and experience at least three of the five symptoms associated with the addiction: headache, fatigue or drowsiness, depressed mood or irritability, difficulty concentrating, and flu-like symptoms such as nausea or muscle pain.

Among regular caffeine drinkers who abstain from caffeine, headaches are reported about 50% of the time and functional impairment about 13%, said Dr. Griffiths, a DSM-5 work group advisor. But even when people don’t have a headache, they may have fatigue or an inability to concentrate, he said. “That’s why I think the prudent and the least painful way to do it is fade caffeine use out over time.”

If you can’t imagine living without coffee but you don’t want to become caffeine-dependent, Dr. Juliano recommends drinking coffee at irregular intervals and limiting your consumption to as close to 100 milligrams as possible. (100 milligrams is equivalent to a cup. And no, not this kind of cup.)

So how does someone become one of the most influential women within Berkshire, a company that has three female directors on a thirteen-member board and five female CEOs? Britt first met Buffet after she and some of her Harvard Business School classmates arranged to visit the famed investor with a student group called Smart Women Securities, which she co-founded. Three years later, in 2009, Britt brought her Harvard M.B.A, a glittering resume, and a boatload of ambition to Omaha in order to interview with Buffet. But it may have been Britt’s unconventional gesture that sealed the deal: the Journal reports that during the interview process, Britt, a native Kansan, gave the investor “a gift to highlight their shared Midwestern roots: a bushel of corn and a batch of tomatoes.”

Britt’s office sits right next to Buffet’s at Berkshire headquarters. According to the Journal, her responsibilities include helping with financial research, accompanying Buffet to meetings, and occasionally driving him around town. But it’s not all corn bushels and car rides: after Berkshire and Brazillian investment firm 3G Capital offered to buy H.J. Heinz & Co. in March, Buffet sent Britt to Brazil. As Buffet told college students in Omaha last month, Britt “takes care of all kings of things that come up.”

“She’s got this wealth of information about what’s going on at the Berkshire portfolio companies,” said Sam Taylor, chief executive of the Berkshire-owned online retailer Oriental Trading Co., told the Journal. “She knows exactly what’s going on and where Warren’s head is at.”

So the next time you’re explaining to your mother that you are still young and have plenty of time to make your millions and that she has to stop “harshing your mellow,” consider Tracy Britt and her Scrooge McDuck sums of money. And then immediately sit down because you’ll need to take a minute.

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I was working about 70 hours a week, managing 80 people and traveling to the company’s other offices (two of which were cross-country) 3-4 days a week, twice a month. Even when I wasn’t at the office or on the road, my Blackberry was constantly lighting up on nights and weekends. I would estimate I got about 400 emails a day.

But with three children under 10, I knew that years of working at a blistering pace was taking a toll on our family, and I needed to make a change. I set out to find something a little less intense and found a great consulting role in marketing and product development with a small firm.

I was excited to keep up all my professional skills (and get some new ones) at a pace I knew would bring some welcome relief to the crazy of our household. At this new job I would manage only 15 people, largely set my own schedule and truly be offline while I was at home. But to make it work, we had to make some adjustments in order to accommodate my reduced salary.

In fact, it was a big reduction: $5,000 a month, plus the substantial bonuses I would no longer receive. When I did the math, I didn’t think it was even possible to make such a massive shift in our lifestyle—but I knew I had to give it a try if I didn’t want to burn out before I turned 40.

How We Cut $5,500 a Month

My husband Mark and I live in Larchmont, N.Y., a small town about 30 minutes outside of New York City, with our three kids, plus our dog Emily, our cat Nikki and our fish Charlie. It isn’t cheap: The median household income hovers around $160,396.

Mark and I had always been good savers. I grew up in a modest home in a blue-collar town near Detroit, Michigan, but I never felt deprived. My parents taught me to never spend more than you earned—period. And I think that instinct kicked in when I took the new job. I had lived with less before and I absolutely knew I could do it again.

Salary cuts aside, I knew that no matter what, we could make things work as long as I followed my parents’ advice. I was fortunate that along with my new position, I still had the financial advantage of a 401(k) with company match for my retirement savings, and considerable savings. My kids stayed on my husband’s insurance, and I realized it was cheaper to leave them there and put myself on my new company’s plan. That just left our monthly expenses, which had ballooned as our family grew.

After a lot of conversation with my husband and a ton of research, I figured out how to make it work.

The first thing I did to scale back our spending was aggregate all of my accounts with an online tool (the LearnVest Money Center wasn’t around then!) to understand where my pay was going. Once I could see my spending in one place, I sorted my expenses from largest to smallest. I figured if I could make big cuts on the big items, I would have a fighting chance of making it work. I’ve never been an over-spender, but we had a substantial mortgage and a full-time nanny, which topped my list of expenses.

First, we put down the money we had saved from our bonuses years prior to pay down a big chunk of our mortgage so that we could refinance and move from a jumbo to a conforming loan. I’ll explain: Fannie Mae only guarantees loans that meet certain requirements, including falling under a cap that changes annually. For 2013 it’s $417,000 ($625,500 for high-cost areas like Larchmont). These are considered “conforming loans.” Because they’re guaranteed, there’s a higher demand for them, and consequently lower interest rates.

The loan we had originally was considered a jumbo loan because it didn’t meet those requirements and wasn’t guaranteed, and had a higher interest rate. Once we put our bonus money toward the loan, we were able to refinance for a conforming loan with the lower interest rates (we went from about 6.75% to about 4.125%). Plus, we achieved 20% equity in our home and were able to stop paying PMI, the insurance you pay before that marker. That made about a $1,500 difference in monthly cash flow—a huge win—after a lot of effort!

Since both Mark and I were working full time, we had employed a nanny to help out. When making cuts, I decided to switch from our nanny of eight years to au pairs, who would live with us for one year each, sacrificing some salary for room and board. I worked with a company that arranges for international students to spend time in the United States. I didn’t like the idea at all of having someone living with us, but the switch would save us another $1,500 a month. (So far, we’ve had three au pairs, and everything’s gone great.)

We also tackled some other areas, like eating out, which saved about $500 per month (we’re up to $3,500 in monthly savings, if you’re keeping track!). I know spending $500 a month on eating out sounds like a lot, but for a family of six—including the au pair—that’s only dinner out four times a month, spending about $15 per person each time.

I had more time to shop and cook because of my new hours, and I’d say it was the best thing that ever happened to our family. My kids were too young to realize that we were cutting our expenses, but I know they noticed that I was home more—and less stressed when I was.

While making all of these cuts, we also made sure to leave room for little luxuries so the transition wouldn’t be too hard. For example, we love wine, so we doubled our “bottle of wine at home” budget. Side note: There are some amazing bottles for less than $20 in any local wine store!

That’s not to say that everything went perfectly all the time. Mark, who works in clean energy, was incredibly supportive—but we did have a “flare up” when I tried to  swap his precious parmesan cheese block for a less expensive kind. There was a near revolt from my foodie husband, and I learned that some cutbacks are just not worth the fight.

Between these changes and a few more everyday tweaks, we managed to reduce our monthly spending by about $5,500 in the end.

Where We Are Now

The hardest part of the entire process wasn’t the actual spending less. It was the legwork of researching and finding the best lower-cost options, just when I was starting a new job. Refinancing a mortgage takes time, focus and paperwork. So does finding a great au pair service, writing the application and interviewing candidates. Plus, I had to get used to someone else living in my house … which actually turned out to be much easier than I thought. The au pairs tend to be really independent, and when they’re off duty, they usually aren’t around. I was worried about the transition, but my kids like having a fresh approach every year.

It took me two and a half years to get myself into a role at the consulting firm where I could earn a good deal of sales commission, and we kept up our new spending habits throughout that time. In fact, I eventually ended up earning even more than I had at my old job when all my sales commissions were factored in, but at that point, we had already made structural changes in the big things and were able to save more than we ever had.

I’m no longer at my consulting job—I found my next position through a project for a company I ultimately decided I really wanted to join.

When I read all of the research about the relationship between money and happiness, I can’t help but think that they’re completely different metrics. I was certainly very happy when I shared a basement apartment when I was just starting out, and no matter where life takes me, I know that I could be equally happy with far less than I have now.

This post originally appeared on LearnVest. It has been republished with permission.

More from LearnVest:

• I Paid $15,000 of Debt… Training For a Marathon
• The Unemployment Diet: How We Cut Our Spending By $1,000 a Month
• Why Women Are Burning Out at Work Before 30

While we tweeted Youtube comedy duo Broken People‘s video out to our followers (@TheJaneDough), we just couldn’t help sharing it again — it’s that good! Hopefully this video makes you feel better about all the bitchy faces you’ve seen this week. (Just make sure that while you are reading this, you don’t have your bitchy resting face on.)

A startup is just a means to an end. Consider the end, and don’t seek to revel in the means. What do you care about? Who do you want to help? Does a startup make meeting your goals easier or harder? Where will it leave you when your goal is met? Where will it leave you if it isn’t?

The machine doesn’t care about you. In fact, the machine is designed with the understanding that most startups will fail, or at most offer unremarkable returns to investors. The majority of the companies in many VC portfolios are acknowledged duds. One or two “10x” companies prop up most portfolios. At best, startup founders who fail get another pull of the slot machine. At worst, their failures drive them to desperation.

I’ve seen firsthand the damage that startups can do to relationships. I’ve watched marriages and friendships fall apart, seen children and partners pushed aside, and failed those in my life in all kinds of ways when work came to the fore. I’ve listened as people who are the very picture of startup success – visible in the press and social media, headlining conferences, forever founding and exiting – have confided their utter loneliness despite being seemingly at the social center of the entrepreneurial community.

You could take this tack, but I hope that your idealism hasn’t been worn down at such a relatively young age. I hope you want your work to be imbued with meaning, purpose, and value no matter what form that work takes. More than that, I hope you want your life to be defined by more than work.

To read the rest of the essay, click here.

“Voters seem to be ambivalent towards female politicians and to have ill-defined ideas about what it means to be a female politician,” Schneider and Bos write in the latest issue of Political Psychology “Despite gains in the percentage of politicians who are female, there may still not be enough women in office for voters to form a consensus of stereotypical qualities.” After comparing female politician stereotypes to other comparable groups such as politicians and female professionals, they found that female politician stereotypes were “nebulous” and “lacked clarity.” In short, study participants didn’t know what to think about female politicans. Get a women in a pantsuit and put her in charge of a municipality, city, state, or nation, thereby defying traditional gender roles and the status quo, and people’s brains melt. WOMYN LEADER!? DOES NOT COMPUTE!! %$@!(! 0110! BEEP BOOP! COMPUTER LANGUAGE!

The chart below represents a section of Schneider and Bos’ data. Take a look at the qualities that are ascribed to women and how often they are selected to describe female politicians. While 93.5 percent of the study’s participants describe women as “feminine” and “emotional” only 45.1 percent and 29.4 percent used the same terms to describe female politicians. The gaps only widen as you go down the line of gendered traits. Compassionate, affectionate, sympathetic — while these were all terms that participants used to describe the broad group of “women” they apparently weren’t appropriate for female politicians. Evidently women politicians and women share very little in common.

According to Schenider and Bos’ conclusions, we define female politicians more by their perceived “deficits” than their strengths.”In addition to failing to possess the strengths associated with being women (e.g., sensitive or compassionate),” the authors write. “Female politicians [are seen to] lack leadership, competence, and masculine traits in comparison to male politicians.” So female politicians aren’t masculine enough to be adequate politicians and aren’t feminine enough to be adequate women…? And people want to tell me that sexism doesn’t exist? Ugh, I need a drink. What about you, Hill-Dog?

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Gillibrand’s proposal — the boldest in a pack of legislative attempts to reform the military’s process of reporting sexual assault — would have given independent prosecutors the power to decide which sexual assault crimes to try rather than military commanders, tackling the conflict of interest in the current system and alleviating victims’ fears of retaliation or retribution.

Gillibrand believes that hosting prosecution within the chain of military command creates significant barrier to reporting; as she said in a press conference, “When any single victim of sexual assault is forced to salute her attacker, clearly our system is broken.”

Levin, the Chairman of the Armed Services Committee, replaced Gillibrand’s proposal (which had 27 co-sponsors including 4 Republicans) with his own; Levin’s requires a senior military officer to review decisions by commanders who decline to prosecute sexual assault cases. Although Levin’s new bill changes the system somewhat, the prosecution remains within the chain of command.

To put it in layman’s terms: this is a really big deal. Don’t believe me? Let’s take a look at some depressing statistics! According to a recent Pentagon survey:

• An estimated 26,000 assaults took place last year
• Of those assaults, only 1,108 troops filed for an investigation. (4.2 percent of total assaults)
• Of those investigations, only 575 cases were processed. (2.2 percent of total assaults)
• Of the cases processed, only 96 went to court-martial. (0.3 percent of total assaults)

And that’s not even accounting for the fact that once at court-martial, the officer who convened the trial can change the charge, reduce the sentence, or even overturn the verdict.

Here’s another doozy: Gillibrand is one of only seven women on the Armed Services Committee. Only seven women out of the twenty-six Senators who sit on the committee. “Wow, seven seems like such a low number,” you exclaim, but oh no, this is a high number by the committee’s standards — a “record breaker,” in fact. Bothered yet?

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Eric Glatt and Alexander Footman sued Fox Searchlight in September 2011 claiming that their internships consisted of basic chores — answering phones, taking lunch orders, arranging employees’ travel plans — that were normally undertaken by paid employees. Judge Pauley determined that these tasks did not foster an education environment and primarily served to benefit the company.

“Undoubtedly Mr. Glatt and Mr. Footman received some benefits from their internships, such as résumé listings, job references and an understanding of how a production office works,” he wrote in his opinion. “But those benefits were incidental to working in the office like any other employees and were not the result of internships intentionally structured to benefit them.”

“Searchlight received the benefits of their unpaid work, which otherwise would have required paid employees,” the Judge added.

Judge Pauley’s decision nullifies the argument made by companies like Fox that unpaid internships fall under Department of Labor guidelines since “the internship’s benefits to the intern outweigh the benefits to the engaging entity.” In his opinion, the Judge called such a method of measurement too subjective and unpredictable. He went on to suggest that unpaid internships should be allowed only in very limited circumstances and that academic credit isn’t a valid form of compensation.

“I’m absolutely thrilled,” said Mr. Glatt,. “I hope that this sends a very loud and clear message to employers and to students doing these internships, and to the colleges that are cooperating in creating this large pool of free labor — for most for-profit employers, this is illegal. It shouldn’t be up to the least powerful person in the arrangement to have to bring a lawsuit to stop this.”

The Judge’s decision could have major implications for the thousands of businesses and organizations that rely on unpaid interns to perform the work of entry-level employees. Rachel Bien, a lawyer for the plaintiffs, said “Employers have already started to take a hard look at their internship programs. I think this decision will go far to discourage private companies from having unpaid internship programs.”

Research firm Intern Bridge estimates that undergraduates work in over one million internships a year, half of which are unpaid. If this case does upend the flawed internship system (which is doubtful), one can only imagine how unemployment numbers will change. (Hint: they’d probably go down.) Unpaid internships are unsustainable even for the most hardworking and passionate individuals and they are creating a stagnant workforce. Any ruling that even attempts to upend internship culture is a step in the right direction.

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If this were the Men to Watch list, I doubt there would be Daddy icons next to the big important manly exectuives’ names. Just sayin’.

And what’s with the “she wears pants” detail? Is that supposed to signify to us that said pants-wearing woman is powerful? Aggressive? That she can hold her own in a boys club? I don’t think whether or not a woman wears pants gives me any insight into her character. Maybe she works in a casual office. Or maybe she gets cold easily. Or maybe she just likes to wear pants! Telling your readers that a particular Woman to Watch wears pants is dumb, Ad Age, and about as relevant as telling us that she uses frizz-control shampoo or that she isn’t a fan of nachos.

Research has shown that focusing on someone’s looks or clothing choices can hurt their credibility later on but that doesn’t stop the media from obsessing over powerful women’s appearances: The New York Times recently ran an essay on the alleged importance of a female senator’s handbag choice, female news anchors’ outfit choices are constantly under scrutiny in the press, and The Washington Post published an article all about White House counsel Kathryn Ruemmler’s shoes (which Flip The News wrote a brilliant parody of, flipping the gender so it is a male staffer’s shoes that garner such excessive attention)— and that’s just the tip of the sexist iceberg!

I think we can all agree that what a woman wears has nothing to do with her intelligence, the likelihood of her success, or how good at her job she is…or at least it shouldn’t. When are we just going to drop the issue? A successful woman’s ideas are much more interesting than what type of fabric she pulls on in the morning.