According to the New York Times: In 2005, women working full time had median weekly earnings of $585 or 81 percent of the median weekly earnings of men. In 1979, women earned 63 percent as much as men.

Enough said.

Returnees have a spring in their step according to the October 7th issue of The Economist. In Ireland, they enjoy a 10% wage premium over their stay-at-home compatriots. In China, they receive more grants and fellowships than their domestic counterparts. A third of Taiwan's companies were founded by returnees from America. Oh, did you think I was talking about women returning to work after an interruption in their careers?

Would that I was! The talent elite everywhere has in common that it is more mobile than the rest. Most developed countries are already struggling to find enough doctors and teachers, and are wondering how they will manage when the baby-boomer generation retires. The Economist says that, "Developing countries, for their part, realize that they will not be able to plug into the global knowledge economy unless they give their people the freedom to move around." But women who want to contribute to businesses are routinely forced out when they attempt to "move around."

Companies are beginning to become aware of the need to gather and retain talent. "The first rule is to think more carefully about their critical talent." Unfortunately, The Economist article fails to identify the potential talent windfall for companies who pay attention to the many women they lost to attrition. Many of these women represented the critical talent of their time and if given a chance to work on projects part time or in some flexible ways would contribute straight to the bottom line. They would likewise need less breaking in than a new recruit. Booz Allen, IBM and Deloitte have already begun to cultivate an internal market for talent. Often, companies do not have corporate officers assigned responsibility for talent attraction and retention. One thing is for sure.

The notion that arrangements for one person of talent must be made available to the general employment pool is outdated. In order to buttonhole stars, the deal needs to be customized. According to McKinsey, "tacit" jobs-- ones that require complex interactions and a high level of judgement have grown three times as fast as employment in general including transcational and manufacturing jobs. That means that about 70% of new jobs created in the last 8 years require tacit interaction. I understand the potential landmines of making deals for superstars but it is a method of attracting talent that American business invented. And the truth is that talent is ruled by inequalities. It is not equally distributed across age, gender, or country.

I do happen to know a couple of talented doctors and teachers who represent the "passive candidate pool." They are quietly raising their children and running the volunteer organization at the library. The line forms here.

Been hitting the holiday boutique circuit early this year. What I see behind many of the jewelry tables and handcrafted baby bibs are incredibly talented women. I always ask them if this is the training they got in college or if handcrafted giftware is a second career. So far I have met an attorney, a chemist and a several former teachers. One thing they all have in common is that they are mothers who left their first careers to care for their families. Not one of these women can conceive of how they could have crafted a work schedule that would have allowed them to remain in their chosen careers. Everyone of them is hard working, multi-tasking, loyal, clever and entrpreneurial. Last I checked these are the keywords management is looking for when they discuss attraction and retention strategies for their departments.

Funny thing is that when you look at a professional's work day and compare discretionary time available to what a mother has available to apply to her small business you see how similar they are. Due to meetings and interruptions, the average employee in an office has about 2.5 hours of discretionary time. The time is fragmented and represents less than 25% of the work day. A mother has similar uncontrollable interruptions including visitors, phone calls, crises and a to-do list that would take longer to complete than there are hours available. The glimmer of a solution for both employee and mother is to gain control of more of the day. One way I can recommend is to plan the day in advance and to estimate how long it will take to complete the tasks on hand. Estimating how long a task will take allows you to prioritize and drop tasks that you know in advance won't get handled. This is actually quite a relief as it cuts out the worrying you would have been doing all day about that task.

From a big picture vantage point, I want businesses to see that tasking a talented woman in her field of interest for a focused period of time offers benefits for both. I look at these women running their businesses at the holiday boutiques and recognize that they are achievers. They don't just work hard at work. They think about their work a lot of the time. They also acknowledge the value of paying attention to their families or their health (they all looked fit to me). In short, they are fully engaged with the task at hand. Who knew, a "happy workaholic!" I encourage business leaders to reach out to the valued employees they want to keep and find a way to configure the business at hand to engage the vast talent pool represented by professionals who are available fewer hours. They create value for the world wherever they are -- hire them for what they can bring to our business ideals!