It's been over 20 years since the Wall Street Journal first coined the phrase "glass ceiling" and yet today only 12 of all Fortune 500 companies are run by a female CEO and the average woman still makes 80 cents for every dollar a man makes.

In her new book "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women On The Road To Success" author and expert Sylvia Ann Hewlett explores why women want to get back into the job market and the hurdles they face in doing so.

Here's an excerpt:

WHY DO WOMEN WANT BACK IN?

Desperate Housewives notwithstanding, talented women who blithely throw their careers to the wind are the exception rather than the rule. As mentioned earlier, the overwhelming majority of highly qualified women currently off-ramped (93 percent) want to return to their careers.

Many of these women have financial reasons for wanting to get back to work. Nearly half (46 percent) cite “wanting to have their own independent source of income” as an important motivating factor. Women who participated in our focus groups talked about their discomfort with “dependence.” However good their marriages, many disliked needing to ask for money. Not being able to splurge on some small extravagance or make their own philanthropic choices without clearing it with their husbands did not sit well with them either. It’s also true that a significant proportion of women seeking on-ramps are facing troubling shortfalls in family income: 38 percent cite “household income no longer sufficient for family needs” and 24 percent cite “partner’s income no longer sufficient for family needs.” Given what has happened to the cost of housing (up 55 percent over the past five years), the cost of a college education (up 40 percent over the past decade), and the cost of health insurance (up 87 percent since 2000), it’s easy to see why many professionals find it hard to manage a family budget on just one income.13

But financial pressures do not tell the whole story. Many of these women also found deep pleasure in their chosen careers and want to reconnect with something they love. Forty-three percent cite the “enjoyment and satisfaction” they derive from their careers as an important reason to return—among teachers this figure rises to 54 percent, and among doctors it rises to 70 percent (see figures 2-8 and 2-9). A further 16 percent want to “regain power and status in their profession.” In our focus groups women talked eloquently about how work gives shape and structure to their lives, boosts confidence and self-esteem, and confers status and standing in their communities. As one former executive put it, “Cocktail party chitchat is so much easier if you can claim to be a professional, even a lapsed professional. Besides which, my children insist on it. My fifteen-year-old daughter doesn’t want to be caught dead with a mom who is ‘just’ a housewife.” For many off-rampers, their professional identity remains their primary identity, despite the fact that they are currently taking time out. This makes a great deal of sense given the length of women’s working lives—which currently spans thirty-five to forty years. For many off-rampers time out represents a mere blip on the radar screen.

Perhaps the most unexpected reason women give for returning to work centers on altruism. Twenty-four percent of women currently looking for on-ramps are motivated by “a desire to give something back to society” and are seeking jobs that allow them to contribute in some way. In focus groups off-ramped women talked about how their time at home had changed their aspirations.Whether they’d gotten involved in protecting the wetlands, supporting the local library, rebuilding a playground, or being a “big sister” to a disadvantaged child, they all felt newly connected to the importance of what one woman called “the work of care.”

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