About a year ago, I wrote a blog about a memorandum which was sent to only the female attorneys in one of the largest law firms in the world. The memorandum was created by the firm’s Women’s Committee  in order to improve their female associates’ presentation skills. Included in the memorandum were “tips” such as, “Your friends will still like you afterwards, even if you adopt a more formal tone,” and “Don’t giggle; Don’t squirm; Don’t tilt your head,” and, lastly, “Practice hard words.”

This week a friend forwarded to me an Opinion article published by The New York Times which cited a study done for Fortune.com concerning the difference between workplace reviews given to men and women.  I read both The New York Times article and the study.  After reviewing two hundred and forty-eight reviews from twenty-eight companies, the authors of the study found that managers gave female employees more negative feedback than they gave male employees.  Moreover, seventy-six percent of the negative feedback given to women included some kind of personality criticism, such as comments that the woman was “abrasive,” “judgmental” or “strident.” Only two percent of the reviews received by the men included negative personality comments.  Most interestingly, the results were the same whether the manager writing the review was a male or a female.

I can readily recall being a  very young associate attorney and discussing with other female associates, in the changing room at our annual firm outing, how long it would take for a certain male partner to approach me, make a lecherous comment, and lewdly touch an exposed area of my back.  The partner in question approached me exactly as predicted within moments of my entrance into the cocktail room. This incident and many more like it, however, occurred before Anita Hill testified at the Supreme Court confirmation hearings of Clarence Thomas. While Ms. Thomas’ testimony did not usurp the nomination of Justice Thomas, it did draw attention to and effectively lead to the prohibition of the uncomfortable and inappropriate behavior many of us were experiencing in professional offices at that time. For those of us who had experienced sexual harassment, the result of Ms. Hill’s testimony was a complete change in our workplace environment.

But have we gone far enough? If we allow women in the workplace to be critiqued for who they are, as opposed to the work they are producing, aren't we still engaging in gender harassment? What else needs to be done?