Blog Posts by BNET

By Kimberly Weisul

Is your CEO about to become a father? If you're a woman employee at his company, you should hope the newborn is a girl.

Professors Michael Dahl of Aalborg University in Denmark, Cristian Dezsö of the University of Maryland's Robert H. Smith School of Business, and David Gaddis Ross at Columbia Business School recently completed a study of the gender pay gap in the Danish workplace.

Worldwide, women earn an estimated 9 to 18 percent less than men with the same job descriptions and equivalent education and experience. Denmark, despite being considered a relatively egalitarian society, still has a wage gap. It's also the ideal place to study wage gaps, because the government keeps very thorough demographic statistics on its population and on every Danish company.

Earlier research suggested that US legislators who have daughters tend to vote more liberally on women's issues, especially issues of reproductive rights. So the researchers thought a male CEO who

By Jessica Stillman

Based on the surrounding media furor, nearly every thinking American had an opinion on Yale professor Amy Chua's pot-stirring parenting memoir Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother.

Some cast an anxious glance across the Pacific towards a rising China and thought Chua's extreme style might be just the thing to keep America's kids competitive, while others argued her approach was a recipe for a huge therapy bill and a timid life. But at least one person steered clear of the debate - Westchester, N.Y. based dentist Dr. Edward Zuckerberg, father of Facebook founder and Time person of the year Mark Zuckerberg.

Papa Zuckerberg told a local call-in radio show on Friday that he was unfamiliar with the bestseller, but answered listeners' questions about how he and his wife Karen raised their budding billionaire. And the answer is a far cry from the hefty dose of ridicule and discipline prescribed by Chua. Dr. Zuckerberg said:

By Melanie Warner

An AquaBounty salmon compared to an Atlantic salmon of the same age. Photo courtesy of AquaBounty.Senators from Alaska and other salmon-producing states are battling to prevent the approval of genetically engineered salmon - what they like to call "frankenfish." But their efforts are likely to fall on deaf ears, since the FDA appears to be hellbent on providing U.S. consumers with their first GE animal food, and could announce approval within the next few months.

Alaska Senators Mark Begich, a Democrat, and Lisa Murkowski, a Republican, have crossed party lines to reintroduce a bill last week that would ban biotech salmon, developed by a Massachusetts-based company called AquaBounty Technologies. Begich is worried that AquaBounty's salmon would harm his state's important wild salmon fisheries, though it's not clear that he's right about that since wild salmon and farmed salmon - which would include the GE variety - are priced very differently and have two distinct markets.

Begich also calls AquaBounty's salmon, which is engineered to grow almost twice as fast

By Margaret Heffernan

First, the IRS ruled that breast pumps and other nursing supplies qualify for tax breaks. Now First Lady Michelle Obama, as part of her campaign against childhood obesity, is reportedly planning to encourage mothers to breastfeed -- not only at home -- but at work.

And the law is on her side. A provision of the new health care law requires employers with more than 50 employees to "provide reasonable break time" for an employee to nurse and "provide a place, other than a bathroom" to do the nursing.

It's incredible that anyone would quibble with a free health benefit, especially given that multiple studies show breastfeeding reduces illness and death. But expect the firestorm.

Already, the other day Rep. Michele Bachman, in a spectacularly humorless act of doublethink, decried the tax credit as the "nanny state" -- but it is breaks like this that let children get fed by their mothers and not their nannies!

There are always people (men and

By Rick Broida and Dave Johnson

Overwhelmed by e-mail? Of course you are; everyone is. I've never met someone who said, "Gee, I sure wish I got more mail!" So how can you downsize the soul-crushing, productivity-sapping, always-overflowing nightmare that is your inbox?

Three words: less is more. In Email Etiquette for the Super-Busy, webzine The 99 Percent suggests 10 best practices for inbox reduction, most of which involve keeping things clear, concise, and efficient. Here are two I wish every person on the planet would remember:

By Melanie Warner

The government's latest version of the dietary guidelines, announced by USDA secretary Tom Vilsack and Health and Human Services secretary Kathleen Sebelius, illustrates why Americans have gotten so good at ignoring these things.

Although some have heralded the 2010 guidelines as the clearest we've ever gotten, that's not saying very much. Our government's official nutrition advice is still written in the abstract language of nutrition - percentages and milligrams and discussions of nutrients and "food components." What's missing is plain English and an awareness that Americans eat actual food, not "food components."

Where in the supermarket, I wonder, is the "added sugar" aisle that I need to wheel my cart past? And what will my server at Chili's say when I tell him to hold the "solid fats" from my Bacon Ranch Chicken Quesadilla?

A healthy America vs. pissing off the food lobby

Given the sometimes dueling pressures of public health and food industry

By Margaret Heffernan

Ten years ago, when I was a CEO, women would come up to me to shake my hand; they had, they'd often say, never seen a female CEO in the flesh before. It was touching and odd, and I was confident it would soon be a thing of the past.

Now I'm not so sure. In 2009, everyone asked why there weren't many women at Davos -- and here we are in 2011 wondering exactly the same thing. Of the Fortune 1000, only 28 are led by women who continue to be absent in leadership roles in media, politics, science as well as my own field, high tech. With women taking the majority of graduate degrees, no one really believes there is a pipeline issue any more.

We all know there's still a problem and debate will continue to rage about why women's progress has stalled. But one of the reasons that is least discussed is universal: bias.

The Brain as Security Guard (or Why Peter Prefers Pepsi)

This is not about political correctness. It's about neurology. Quick lesson in how the

By Kimberly Weisul

How can you be happier? Jennifer L. Aaker, a marketing professor at Stanford University's School of Business, Melanie Rudd, a Stanford MBA student, and Wharton marketing professor Cassie Mogilner, are here to help. Noting that inquiries into money and happiness have found surprisingly few correlations between the two, the trio instead set out to look at the way people spend their time and how that affects happiness. The researchers examined 60 academic studies, then tried to draw links between those findings to draw more general conclusions.

The results? Here are five guidelines they say anyone can use to increase their happiness.

1. Spend time with the "right people." Sounds simple. But who exactly are the right people? Unfortunately, they're generally not your office mates, who are the ones people tend to spend the most time with. The people that make you happiest will generally be friends, family, and romantic partners. That's why one the most powerful