If this is your moment to move on, congratulations. If you’ve quit, been poached, or even been laid off, the future looks rosier than the past. You may be feeling nervous and insecure, but your prospects, and the prospects for all women yearning for workplace sanity, are better than ever. Across the country, companies are instituting flexibility as a standard work practice, which often does away with the need for those agonizing individual negotiations. You’ve embarked on your search at just the right time—the work life you want is within reach.

Instead of trying to make an existing job bend to fit what you need, you may be able to find a new model built to suit. No retrofitting! And by the way, this is the same for any of you being wooed or simply looking around for something better from your current perch. In this chapter you’ll learn not only how to spot potential employers that meet your needs, but we’ll also show you our favorite Womenomics-friendly companies. Their example is changing our world of work.

A Fresh Start

If you’re looking for a fresh start, the trick is to find out whether your potential mate is really everything he says he is. How do you know for sure this is a company that’s going to suit your Womenomics requirements? When you’re considering a new employer it’s easy, of course, to ask about the job itself; it’s a lot harder to ask about the firm’s commitment to work-life issues. So how do you go about the hunt without scaring off the prey?

Here’s some advice from an unexpected source.

Just as we were finishing this book, we checked in again with all of our women to see how they were doing, and we got some surprising news from Christine Heenan. Remember that when we first met Christine she was being wooed for a big job at Harvard and seemed pretty confident she would turn it down because she didn’t want to give up her fantastically flexible work life at her own communications company in Rhode Island. Well, she changed her mind. The high-powered Harvard job was too exciting to resist. But here’s the interesting thing: she only took that big job after pointedly raising her schedule requirements with the university.

At the end of her first interview with the search committee, Christine was asked if she had any questions. That’s when she raised her work-life concerns and here’s how she did it. “I said, ‘I think it’s probably fair to say that I work as much or as intensively as anyone at this table but I also think it’s quite likely that I work differently. I’m at my kids’ school at 3 o’clock most afternoons picking them up and I run a school newspaper project on Fridays and I value my flexibility. What is Harvard’s commitment to work-life balance?’”

She knew the Harvard job would demand more hours in the office than she was used to, but she was also clear that if Harvard wasn’t going to be able to try to accommodate her family commitments, she wouldn’t take the post. Christine wouldn’t have taken the job if Harvard had responded negatively to her family concerns. Christine also feels the fact that Harvard has a new President, Drew Gilpin Faust, who is herself a working mother, means her boss genuinely understands her priorities. She says that makes a big difference in making her flexibility a practice not just a policy. And she believes that, having raised the issue formally, if her new colleagues ever raise eyebrows when she leaves early, she can always remind them of their interview conversation.

This is the thing about Womenomics, and it’s what makes the traditional ladder idea so ridiculous: there are times to scale back and times to ramp up, just as Christine did. But whatever stage you’re in, it’s worth making very sure that the new job fits your work-life goals. And remember: there is a big difference between policy and practice when it comes to flexibility.

Do your due diligence. This seems obvious, but it’s worth a reminder. Check out the company you’re thinking of joining on the Web, at your favorite social networking site, in the local paper. There are lots of great resources. We love the Sloan Foundation’s Family and Work Institute. They’ve got piles of data and a family-friendly annual survey. Or try Working Mother magazine. They’ve been rating the top companies for us for twenty years.

Take cards or names of people you come across in interviews who might be good sources. Check out the company-related blogs. They can be a trove of candid information. Call anybody on-site who might be straightforward about responsibilities, and potential issues; that connection is invaluable. Ask other women at the company what the reality is. And by the way, the savvy employer expects to be checked out.

“I keep reminding managers here,” says David Rodriguez, head of HR at Marriott, “we’re being evaluated constantly. Somewhere on the Internet there is a group of people sharing this information. You can’t hide. You can’t say ‘I’m this type of company’ and not expect you will be assessed.”

Be rigorous on details. Any employer can point to a couple of women who job share or leave at 3 P.M. Or he could open up the company manual and point out their progressive-sounding policies. For example, 98 percent of law firms offer part-time or flex-time scheduling. Actual usage rates? Five percent. “It just shows how incredibly stigmatized the schedules still are,” says Flex-time Lawyers’ Deborah Epstein Henry.

Even if the company as a whole has a good approach to alternative work schedules, just make sure that attitude applies to the corner of the shop where you’ll be working. “Sixty percent of the company you’re looking at could be on some type of flexible work arrangement, but the department you may work in could have a manager who’s totally opposed,” warns Women for Hire’s CEO, Tory Johnson.

Now, we hope you are feeling empowered by Womenomics, but you do still have to be smart about getting the most from your power. Please do not start any interview by leaning across the desk and demanding a job share. It’s important to know when to raise flexibility. “It might be a way to be knocked out of the interview process to say, ‘What I want to know first and foremost is what’s your policy on flexibility,’” says Johnson.

Christine’s advice about how and when to raise the issue in the course of your job search? “I think you do have to first establish yourself as having the work ethic and the DNA to do the job as it’s required, before you have permission to say, ‘What’s the threshold for you for doing it a bit differently?’”

But she did raise it early because she was ambivalent about even taking the job. First Lady Michelle Obama likes to recount the story of having a babysitter crisis just as she was going for her interview as public liaison for the University of Chicago hospital system. At the last minute, she threw her daughter in the stroller and figured that, since this was partly why she was looking at this job, they needed to know she put her family first. She took her daughter to the interview—a ballsy move—and got the job. And before her husband ran for president she routinely skipped out for afternoon soccer games.

Melissa James says it’s like any other sales presentation: you have to know your audience. “You need to know the most effective way to talk about it for the person who’s listening. Try to figure that out. But my advice would probably be to put it on the table. It’s important to calibrate expectations from the start.”

So if you feel you’ve got plenty of muscle, raise it early. For most of us, it’s probably good smarts to follow that old chestnut of a standard script: inquire about responsibilities, show off your knowledge of the company, subtly brag about your achievements and prowess, and express enormous enthusiasm for joining the team. Once they are charmed by you and your talent, that’s the moment to test the waters with your potential bosses and HR. Clever phrases to break the ice from Tory Johnson: “Talk to me about the culture of your department. Talk to me about your policies around flexibility. What do schedules look like here? What are the work styles of the people I’d be working with?”

Whenever in the process you choose to make your point, it’s far better to get specific before you take the job about both your intentions and expectations. Using everything you’ve uncovered in Womenomics, make sure you know exactly how you want to work, and then let them know what you’d like to do and how you plan to do it. Don’t cross your fingers and think you’ll “sort it out later.” By then, patterns and habits will have been established. You don’t get a chance to reset the stage of your work life very often. Grab it.

Womenomics-Friendly

It’s getting harder for companies to disguise their true natures. You certainly won’t be taken in by a superficial rouge job if you’ve followed the process we outlined above. You’ll also find, as you really begin to look around, that a company’s Womenomics-friendly attitude will shine through like a healthy glow. And the news is good. Flexibility is moving quickly from being a favor to being the industry standard. We’ve discovered in our research that there are myriad ways to create programs that make for a happier and freer workforce, but we’ve also noticed that those companies that do it best have one of these two traits: either a commitment to full-scale institutional flexibility, or thoroughly modern managers who understand that productivity and talent retention are essential. Here are some examples of what you should be looking for.

Nirvana Squared

There’s just no better way to describe what some companies have pulled off on the freedom front. We’ve given you details about the great program at Capital One, and there are so many other visionary places. What sets them apart is the belief that flexibility should be an institutional practice—a standard across the company instead of a favor bestowed by paternalistic employers. Their routes to this enlightened state were different, but the results—the benefits—are stunningly clear.

Best Buy

Next time you need to buy a television or a computer and you hop down to the local Best Buy to make the purchase, remind yourself that this isn’t an ordinary shopping expedition. You are heading into the belly of a workplace revolution.

Back in 2002 Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson were both human resources managers at Best Buy, back then a ferociously face-time, eight-to-five, Monday-through-Friday kind of place. But Thompson, a boomer, and Ressler, a Gen Xer, saw that the world outside the company fences was changing—becoming less static. And they saw also that the old-fashioned culture at Best Buy just wasn’t working for them.

So they started dreaming of a workplace that would suit them and the new global environment. It would be a workplace where no one has to get permission to watch their kids’ weekday soccer game. A workplace where people aren’t promoted because they arrive early and stay late. A workplace where there is no when or where—just “how well.” A workplace where performance is measured solely on the basis of results and not hours at the office.

Their dream is now a reality called ROWE—Results-Only Work Environment. In a ROWE you control where, when, and how long you work. So long as you meet your professional objectives, the way you spend your time is entirely your decision.

Ressler and Thompson knew they couldn’t just go to their CEO and trot out their vision, so they met in private and rolled out ROWE by stealth. They organized tiny pilots and waited for an opportunity to go bigger. In 2003 they got that chance, and since then, in a remarkably short time, these two pioneering women have radically changed the Fortune 500 megacompany into a worker-friendly haven. They have given employees far more than flexibility—they have also given them freedom. Their clock-less, schedule-less, boundary-less system of working has radically changed lives. Now ROWEs have spread throughout the company.

“When Jody and I first came up with ROWE, we were focused on the corporate office environment, but today we’re actually on the verge of beginning work with Best Buy retail to figure out how this will look in the retail stores. ROWE is not about not going to a workplace; it’s about having control over your time. There are things in every environment that just don’t make sense anymore, and they’re making people stressed-out and feel like children, so we know that there’s a huge opportunity outside the office environment for this,” explains Cali Ressler.

Workers at Best Buy say they no longer know if they work fewer hours; they don’t really care, and they’ve stopped counting. But they are much happier, and they are more productive. Right across the company, departments that adopted the ROWE revolution saw productivity rise by an average of 40 percent.

“At first, we took this on faith—that people wanted to be treated like adults, they wanted to be trusted to do their work in a way that makes sense for them, and that people would really step up to the plate if left free to do their work the way they thought best, not the way the company let them do it,” says Jody Thompson.

“I don’t come in to the office at eight and leave at five, there’s no way. I have two mornings from about 8 A.M. until 1 P.M. where I’m not in the office at all because I’m studying for a master’s,” says Christy Runningen, of Best Buy. “I didn’t ask for permission, and nobody cares. I still get my job done, and I’m happier and more productive than ever.”

Naturally, Jody and Cali encountered hurdles. They’ve had to deal with old-fashioned managers who refused to cede control, with naysayers who said that it would never work and that productivity would plummet. The biggest concern for some managers was that employees would abuse the system—yet, overwhelmingly, that hasn’t happened. Actually ROWE makes it easier, says Thompson, not harder, to see if associates are genuinely pulling their weight rather than just spending long hours in the office.

“The only way that you can scam a results-only work environment is to not get your job done,” explains Thompson. “And, really, what happens on teams is that people who aren’t pulling their weight weren’t doing it before. In ROWE, it becomes really evident, and people are managed strictly on performance, so if somebody’s not holding up their end, it becomes really clear. But they could just skate by and put in time in a traditional work environment.”

Cali and Jody are now national advocates for their system—they are working with another Fortune 150 retailer and a Fortune 100 technology company that are in the process of becoming ROWEs, and a host of smaller companies have already made the transition.

But how can a ROWE possibly work in this economy? Best Buy, like so many retailers, has been struggling with sales, so will this freedom evaporate? On the contrary. Cali and Jody say because the system has actually increased productivity and often lowered fixed costs like real estate, it’s actually expanding. “There is a huge competitive advantage baked in to ROWE in tough economic times because when leadership expects teams to ‘tighten their belt,’ everyone is able to voice whether activities are adding value or whether they’re wasting time. Nobody wants wasted capacity in good times, but in tough times there is NO room for waste,” Cali told us. “ROWE employees know how to get results and are relentlessly focused on that.”

Deloitte and Touche

Anne Weisberg and Cathleen Benko of Deloitte and Touche were heavily focused on how to hang on to their valuable female workforce as the nation heads into a talent shortage. Even in an economic downturn, the fundamentals of America’s demographics still apply. Over the next few years, the country will need productive talent to revive and expand its economy but a deficit of well-qualified labor still looms. For Deloitte, with a huge female workforce, it’s a real structural problem. Weisberg and Benko came up with Mass Career Customization, thanks to an epiphany they had one day that just seemed obvious: if products can now be customized en masse, why not careers?

Every employee at Deloitte, not just women, now continually adjusts key aspects of their career. You can work less, work from different places, shoulder more or less responsibility. Basically, you can choose when to “dial up” and when to “dial down,” with the knowledge that dialing up will get you promoted faster, and dialing down will slow promotions. Benko says what is so critical about the program is the attempt to standardize the idea of a flexible workplace. It removes the individual deal-making for flexible working conditions, which Benko said was creating confusion at Deloitte.

“We found that many people didn’t like the old system,” she says. “People would often say ‘I just feel guilty or I feel like I’m letting my team down.’ And we were also hearing, ‘Am I eligible for the next level? Can I still get promoted?’”

Wal-Mart

Tom Mars is a present-day Johnny Appleseed on the subject of flexibility. As executive vice president and chief administrative officer of a behemoth-like Wal-Mart, he can change minds by planting ideas around the country, and he can use company muscle to force the business world to pay attention. Much as Wal-Mart’s become a major player on the issue of sustainability, it’s set to engender substantial change on the issue of flexibility. “Just a few years ago I was pretty dismissive of the idea of flex-time,” he admits ruefully. “I’m embarrassed at how shallow my thinking was. I think my attitudes were fairly typical of a lot of people. When anybody would raise it with me, I would think privately, ‘We’re trying to run a law department here.’”

But when he has an epiphany, Mars moves fast. A few years ago, when he was general counsel, he looked around at his almost all-white, all-male legal team after attending a legal diversity conference and decided to shake things up. Within a few years, the Wal-Mart legal department employed more than 40 percent women and more than 35 percent lawyers of color. That’s a move he feels has so benefited the quality of the company’s legal work that he’s consistently used the $250 million worth of annual legal business the company does with other law firms to demand change. Wal-Mart noticed almost all of the relationship partners on their top 100 accounts were white men—so Mars asked for more women and minorities. Wal-Mart ended up moving $60 million in annual revenue to new women and minority relationship partners, converting their white male counterparts into the new minority group. And when Mars wasn’t satisfied that several of Wal-Mart’s outside law firms were embracing diversity, he dropped their business.

“You can understand that’s just not the attitude we like in people representing our company around the country,” Mars explains, in a folksy aw-shucks style that must have made his willingness to use the company’s big stick something of a shock to these unenlightened firms.

As he was being feted for those achievements, Mars started reading information about why women have such a hard time making it through the ranks at law firms and companies. It was a lack of flexibility.

“I thought a lot about this, and frankly, I just decided to do it. I came in to the next staff meeting and told my team we needed to do it quickly and without bureaucracy, and to come up with a good policy within thirty days.” He grins.

Today the legal team at the company works without any time boundaries.

“With the exception of a handful of bona fide workaholics, everybody takes advantage of the program. Everybody leaves during the week to go to soccer games and the like. Somebody reported to me recently they went to go see a movie,” Mars says happily. “Our office has had a policy that office hours begin at seven-thirty, but nobody pays attention now. I run into a lawyer who comes into the building at 10 A.M., and frankly, the cool thing about it is I don’t know if they’re coming into work or if they’ve already been here and are coming back again. We just don’t think about it anymore.”

Wal-Mart also gives the 160 lawyers in the department the ability to cut back hours, or work from home a number of days week. Is he worried about clients or image or anything like that if an employee is with her children from three to seven, and then starts work again in the evening?

“In emergencies we’re all flexible. But that’s not common. These days I always tell people,” he says with a shrug, “we’re running a law department, not a fire department.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that no matter how you measure morale, it’s considerably higher than it ever was before,” Mars concludes. “The element of trust that was introduced when we installed flextime has made not only happier people but better lawyers. They have a greater willingness to do their jobs, and to do them with appropriate independence.”

Treat employees like grown-ups and we act like grown-ups. It’s revolutionary.

By the way, Tom’s innovation in Wal-Mart’s legal department has caught the eye of other departments across the company, and many are moving to implement the changes wholesale. We love to emphasize the power of one, your power to affect change as an individual woman. Think of this as the power of one as well—one man who made big waves with his goliath of a company. Bravo.

Sun Microsystems

Sun Microsystems is the epitome of a company without walls, boundaries, or mandatory cubicles. There are employees around the world—from Beijing to Boston to Buenos Aires—working wherever they please. The issue of where an employee might live barely comes up in job interviews. Live where you want. Just get the job done.

Greg Papadopoulos, the chief technology officer for Sun Microsystems, laughs when we suggest that all California companies surely operate that way. Not so. There are plenty of California cultures with the attitude that “if I don’t see your butt in the seat, or don’t see you staying late, then you are not working hard enough,” he says.

Papadopoulos says Sun embraced its Open Work Plan almost by accident, for practical reasons. They were growing so fast in the middle of the dot-com boom most managers realized it was literally impossible to fit everyone into their office space.

These days the plan is critical to company culture. Sun’s Barbara Williams, a senior manager at the company says, with a perpetual smile on her face, that she works harder than ever because of her freedom. “People are just passionate about the workplace and the teams and what they do,” she says, sparkling. “It’s what drew me to Sun—the flexibility—and the amazing opportunity to thrive. So what if my boss is there at 10.30 A.M. I don’t feel I need to be. If I’m more creative at 9 P.M. at night—great!”

The program was revolutionary for the company, critical not only in terms of cost-saving, but also in terms of productivity and talent retention. “It’s all about gathering talent,” says Papa-dopolous. “Technology creation is an art form.”

Even today, as Sun tries to weather the economic challenges, it believes its Open Work Place Program is essential. “Our Open Work plan helps to define the company,” says Ann Bamesberger, vice president of Sun’s Open Work program. “More than that, it ensures that our fixed costs, like real estate, for example, remain reasonable, and that productivity stays high. It’s exactly the sort of program that helps in a challenging economy.”

The Right Stuff

OK. All that sounds great, you’re probably thinking: But what are the odds I’m going to find a company like that? It’s true that most companies don’t have those breathtaking, eye-popping programs and stats to show off, at least not yet. Not every company is ready to, or is even able to, blow open its walls and structures and rules and set its stunned employees free. But you can still find smart companies and their managers who are tuned in to female work-life trends, and who are prepared to adapt to make things work, even within a more traditional structure.

Marriott

At the Marriott Company, which has an enormous female workforce, senior managers are well versed in what’s coming—and that’s a critical attitude to look for. “I do think the workplace is changing—I’m not even sure companies are aware that it’s changing right underneath them,” says David Rodriguez, executive vice president of HR at Marriott. “I fully expect that within the next five years this building will look quite different,” he says, referring to Marriott headquarters in Maryland. “There will probably be more offices rented as needed and a lot of conference space facilities, teleconferencing…. I think it will be very different.”

The company has the standard flextime, compressed workweek, and telecommuting policies on offer, but do the real star managers take advantage of these programs? Not so much, yet. A group of top women we had lunch with, when pressed, said they’d love to work, say, four days a week but didn’t think a move like that would go over well. They still worry about perceptions. But Rodriguez tries to encourage his own team to work at least one day a week from home. He says they are more productive that way. And he’s experimenting. He has a group of “flex-staffers” working on projects—managers who’ve worked at the company before and who are valued—but don’t want to work full time. It may be that those women we had lunch with have more power than they think.

One example of the company’s modern outlook is Laura Bates, a senior executive star, who recently resigned her post at Marriott to spend more time with her children. When she announced her decision, the company surprised her by offering interesting and well-paid contract work that would keep her connected. David Rodriguez hopes that when her children are older, Laura will choose to dial her career back up, at Marriott. “Somewhere, say three to five years out, we fully expect Laura is going to be part of our senior management somewhere in the company,” he says confidently. “It’s crucial to keep her connected.”

PepsiCo

You might imagine the massive PepsiCo to be rigidly set in its corporate ways. Hardly. Even though they don’t have a formal, all-inclusive flexibility program like Sun, for example, their management style is progressive. Working from home some of the time? Usually not a big deal, says Cynthia Trudell, the head of personnel and a senior vice president.

“Years ago there was a general attitude—‘Oh my, if people are working from home, they won’t be working.’” She smiles. “But we believe, and this is literally around the globe, that if people don’t have to be here and they can work from home, then they are in better control of their time.”

It’s a good sign when a company understands work can happen anywhere. It’s even better when bosses push employees to create a less rigid existence. Let them know it’s OK. PepsiCo cemented a program into its performance reviews called “One Simple Thing.” It forces employees to name something not really work-related they’d like to accomplish—to do differently—that might change their routine at the office. Something they may be reluctant to do otherwise—like getting out early to the gym one day a week or working from home one morning.

And a critical thing to look for: can valued managers dial back for a while? Go part time? That is evaluated on a case-by-case basis, but productive employees get a yes whenever possible. Remember Angelique Krembs? She spent almost two years working from home part time. “Where it makes sense we will go out of our way,” Trudell says. “When you work hard at bringing people in, making them part of the organization—if you need those skill sets in the long run it makes sense. It can be a win-win for everyone.”

Even if the practice isn’t yet thoroughly ingrained in company culture, or spelled out in a policy book, if you uncover at a prospective company open minds like they have at PepsiCo or Marriott, then the job you’re looking at is a good bet. You have a chance to be a pioneer and poster child for the company, which is valuable for everyone.

Dot O’Brien

Or you might just get lucky enough to come upon an individual boss like Dot O’Brien. For the two lawyers she employs flexibly—i.e., for the hours they want to work and not more—Dorothy O’Brien gives this grade report: “I judge by results and how they’re delivered, the skill with which they’re delivered, and I believe these two lawyers deliver results that are certainly, at a minimum, equal to colleagues that may have to be here, or choose to be here for longer hours.”

If you hear a sentiment like that, take the job. You will be in very good hands. Thank you, Dorothy, for recognizing what we know to be true.

What can we say—we’re biased. We believe the most meaningful breakthroughs will come when companies stop treating flexible schedules as favors. Gazing out at nirvana, we think that when women, or men, have to give a reason for their “different” schedules, and this in turn means that bosses are then put in the position of having to judge whether or not those reasons are valid, then it results in an inherently unhealthy situation for the feng shui of a modern workplace. It makes some women, or men, nervous, so they don’t ask, and it makes bosses even more nervous, so they don’t offer. A spiral of resentment can build fast on both sides. We’ve spoken to many employers who find the situation incredibly awkward. “We don’t want to choose between a one-year-old daughter, a sick parent, and an unfinished novel,” they tell us. Most bosses simply don’t want the responsibility of passing moral judgment on an employee’s reasons for wanting to change their schedule.

We sympathize. Honestly. Who are we to say that one demand is “better” or more “valid” than another. We certainly don’t care whether your desire to change your life is your children, as ours is, or your dog, or your lotus position.

But the solution to all of these employer concerns is beautifully simple, if you’ll allow us to indulge in a little Womenomics advice to the CEO. Simply stop judging. Does it really matter if it’s little Pat the toddler or big Pat the poodle that’s driving the demand for change? So long, of course, as the work is getting done, the goals are being met, and the employee is producing as she should, why she leaves at 3 P.M., arrives at 10 A.M., or works from her spare room is really irrelevant.

In other words, it’s the results, stupid.

“When you think of all of the ways it could go wrong, you won’t change,” warns Greg Papadopoulos of Sun. “It takes courage from the management side.”

So woman up, corporate America! Are there concerns? Yes. Will it require some work? Yes.

But this is going to be a more pressing issue than ever in a flagging economy. All of the big business thinkers say the focus will necessarily shift to efficiency and productivity. The core tenants of Womenomics.

A more porous, more flexible, and more dynamic workplace is the business future, whether you see that now or not. “The shift is clearly toward that environment,” agrees Bruce Tulgan. “It will happen underneath companies,” agrees David Rodriguez, “and one day they will sort of say maybe we should ride this wave and let policies facilitate what’s already happening.”

The companies who understand the organic, all-encompassing nature of this tidal wave and embrace it are those who stand the best chance of beating the competition on every level. They will be first to the next frontier.

“At Wal-Mart we started experimenting with sustainability a few years ago, and nobody was thinking about it as a way to make our business more efficient or profitable,” notes Tom Mars. “It was all about image and doing good. As we got in to it it’s turned out to be unexpectedly helpful to the business, beyond anybody’s wildest imagination. And I think, as we enter into this flextime and this workforce awareness paradigm, there’s a clear parallel. It seems like the right thing to do, but soon everyone will see that the business case is just obvious.”

How lucky, really, that we live in an era when letting people work the way they want to turns out to be good business, and good business in any economic climate. Sun can attract talent from all over the world. Capitol One can spin its positive energy into profits. And companies like PepsiCo and Marriott have the wisdom to understand how much they’ve invested in executives like Angelique Krembs and Laura Bates, and therefore they’ve said yes to their desire to work in a different way. They are looking beyond temporary career lulls and betting on the future with these women.

Like most things, it just boils down to simple economics. Or should we say, happily for us, Womenomics.

Take Womenomics with You

As you head off into work-life bliss, we want to give you a final bit of news you can literally use—at any moment. Here’s a Womenomics cheat sheet you can cut out and keep in your wallet and pull out whenever you need to remind yourself how you can finally get what you want. If you want to stop all the juggling and struggling and finally live and work the way you really want to right now, here are five Womenomics facts you cannot do without:

ultimate news you can use