Sleep Challenge 2010: Getting Horizontal on the Way to Gender Parity

This horizontal view leaves many high-achieving women less obsessed with moving up the corporate ladder -- always in search of a higher rank, better position, bigger job -- and more focused on family concerns and the idea of doing something better for the world. For them, "advancing" means getting the chance to broaden their influence and reach -- and to use this influence in socially responsible ways.

When confronted with the prevailing "success = driving yourself into the ground" corporate mindset, many women either drop out or, thinking it's the only way to get ahead, embrace the destructive ethos.

As I told the audience in Davos, if we had a corporate culture where people were less stressed and had more sleep and more balance between their work and their lives, we might not have found ourselves on the verge of a complete financial meltdown (recall Matt Taibbi's observation that Wall Streeters often "talk about how hard they work, the 90-hour weeks, the stress, the failed marriages, the hemorrhoids and gallstones they all get before they hit 40.")