Are women not doing it for themselves?: A recent international study finds women are less likely to climb the corporate ladder than their male co-workers, because they’re denied the opportunity — not by their superiors, but by their own insecurities. The study, published in Shannon L. Goodson’s “The Psychology of Sales Call Reluctance,” found that women generally still subscribe to the fiction that the impulse to self-endorse is “socially unacceptable,” “unlady-like” and “morally suspect.”

Best sellers at Best Buy: As more and more women buy electronics, more and more women are selling them. Best Buy is looking to vary its mostly male leadership by recruiting female employees. According to Best Buy, women prefer purchasing their electronics from other women. The company’s 55 Women’s Leadership Forums hold monthly events that cultivate a lively corporate environment for the company’s increasingly important saleswomen.

Virginity: Literary bliss?: Had Jane Austen not been a virgin, there may have been no pride in “Pride and Prejudice.” Take a look at the Guardian’s Top 10 Literary Virgins, and it’s easy to believe a sexless existence is a productive one. John Sutherland thinks that without abstinence, writers like Austen, George Bernard Shaw and Gerard Manley Hopkins wouldn’t have created the legendary work we still read today, but maybe we’d just have less frustrated voices. If Austen hadn’t been celibate, we might’ve gotten more than just a Darcy-Elizabeth wedding — like a real happy ending.

Got breast milk?: The dropout rate for breast-feeding mothers is higher than you may think. According to a recent study at Brigham Young University, three out of four mothers breast-feed their newborns, but only 36 percent of babies are breast-fed through six months, because most of their mothers quit. Mothers with higher levels of education and income, Hispanic women and women born in other countries are among the groups found most likely to breast-feed. Mothers returning to work, smokers and low-income women participating in the subsidized Women, Infants and Children program are among the groups likely to stop breast-feeding sooner.

“WTF” of the hour: The tween bikini wax trend may be as old as Miley Cyrus’ career, but here’s something we didn’t see coming: Preteen bikini waxing helps save money for college! According to Wanda’s European Skin Care Center’s Web site, “Virgin hair can be waxed so successfully that growth can be permanently stopped in just 2 to 6 sessions. Save your child a lifetime of waxing … and put the money in the bank for her college education instead!”

Asthma world turns: Girls are less susceptible to asthma as children than boys, but they’re more likely to still have it after puberty. A new study found significantly more post-pubescent boys to have outgrown their asthma than their female counterparts. At age 18, 27 percent of boys who had asthma as children showed no airway constriction, while only 14 percent of girls showed the same recovery.

Pickup artist, you got served: The star of VH1′s “The Pick-up Artist,” Mystery, is no stranger to bad suits, but they’re not usually legal suits. Erik von Markovik is being sued — not for fraud, surprisingly — but for creating a monopoly in the seduction-advice industry. The complaint claims “The Pick-up Artist” and VH1 “tilted the balance of the internet seduction advice industry so in favor of Defendants Mystery … that their market share of and control over this relevant market approaches that of a monopoly.” Mom-and-pop seduction-advice establishments, hang in there.

More men adopt?: It’s the first time the CDC has gathered adoption stats from men, and the findings may surprise you. Twice as many men as women adopt children. The numbers are clear, but the trend is complicated. Some attribute the glaring imbalance to divorce settlements, which usually place children with their mothers, leaving remarried men more likely than their wives to adopt stepchildren. Others credit the lack of options for gay men who want children: Gay men generally adopt, while gay women can have their own children.

Keep your hands to yourself, perv: New York subways are telling passengers to mind the gap — not the one between the train and the platform, but the one between you and the person next to you. Over the next three months, MTA will circulate 2,000 posters that say, “Sexual harassment is a crime in the subway, too — a crowded train is no excuse for an improper touch. Don’t stand for it or feel ashamed, or be afraid to speak up.” The ad campaign is a response to last year’s unsettling report that 10 percent of women were sexually abused and 63 percent were sexually harassed while riding New York City Transit.

Remember the old-fashioned days, when people just had sex for money?: First it was sex for real estate, then it was sex for gas. The increasingly disturbing sex trade trend has stripped down to the essentials: sex for food. Growing food prices worldwide have forced women in the Pacific and Africa to offer sex in exchange for vital items like fish and cooking oil. It may be the only way for many women to get food, but the consequences are potentially deadly. U.N. officials say the horrifying trend is contributing to the spread of AIDS in malnourished women who aren’t likely to survive an infection.

Stepford lives: Repression, subjugation and inequality aside, the ’50s were totally great! Actually, besides that Great Depression and the subsequent war, the ’30s and ’40s were even better! For three women who think they’re literally living in the past, having no dignity isn’t so bad — it’s heaven. The women dress and live like they’re living in the ’30s, ’40s and ’50s. Sure, the women’s desire to retreat from the rampant materialism of the present is reasonable, but the results are downright disturbing: “My job is to devote myself to Martin. He has a physical, stressful job and he loves coming home to a wife who looks pretty, has his meal ready in an immaculate house and has all the time in the world for him.”

Let’s talk about the sex of your baby: The gender of unborn babies will no longer be kept secret in South Korea, where the government has banned doctors from informing parents of the sex of their children for 21 years. The law was originally passed to protect unwanted female fetuses from abortion, but the South Korean Constitutional Court claims the country has outgrown its Confucian preference for sons, who were traditionally believed to continue a family’s legacy. Today, the proportion of newborn girls to boys, at 100-to-106, is approaching a natural balance. The ban will be officially overturned at the end of the year, but abortion remains illegal.

Notes on camp, Part 1: Packing for Tech Trek Camp? Don’t forget your calculator. And who needs a raincoat when you’ve got a lab coat? Tech Trek Camp at Stanford University is a seven-day camp for eighth-grade girls designed to introduce them to math and science careers that, despite the nonexistent gender gap in math ability, are disproportionately held by men.

Notes on camp, Part 2: New York Times blogger and “Perfect Madness” author Judith Warner offers a thoughtful response to last week’s Times piece on devilishly demanding parents who expect the royal treatment for their kids at luxury sleepaway camps. Warner diagnoses these pampering playgrounds as breeding grounds for “affluenza,” which leads to “alienation and distress” in parents and “overindulgence and attitudes of entitlement” in their children. Warner is less worried about the unimaginably spoiled children of affluenza-ridden parents and more worried about everyone else: “My worry is for the rest of us. For the parents who try to teach our children to play by the rules … And for our children, who are likely to come out the losers in a society dominated by sharks.”