Byline: Emma Pomfret
According to the age-old sayings, hard work pays off, looks aren't everything and you should never judge a book by its cover.
But when it Tiffany Cufflinks comes to work, does your appearance really make a difference to your position on the career ladder? The majority of women in the UK believe it can.
A total of 51 per cent think their careers would progress at a faster pace if they had a better body, according to a new poll of 2,000 women by Top SantA magazine.
And a separate study, by women's website handbag.com and Barclays, discovered that two-thirds of working women in the UK believe they have a far better chance of getting on at work if they are attractive to the opposite sex.
It also found that more than half of the women surveyed feel they have to display some classic masculine characteristics to get ahead.
"This is very surprising that in our current climate," says Debbie Djordjevic, editor at handbag.com."It all boils down to the age-old story of lack of confidence - and the fact that we are bombarded with images of successful women who also happen to be attractive.
"It doesn't matter what industry you work in, time and again, women are portrayed in this light and so the overwhelming belief that you need to be attractive to get on is very deeply ingrained in the female psyche and is very difficult to change."
Dr Sara Connolly, lecturer in economics at East Anglia University, says research shows appearance does matter for both men and women in the workplace.
But she says that doesn't mean your younger, prettier or more handsome co-worker will be promoted ahead of you simply because of the way they look.
"It's not the case that good-looking people get where they are without having other skills, but maybe they are more confident and have better social skills," she says.
And what constitutes these good looks can vary.
"It means looking well-groomed and smartly dressed. It's not necessarily a 'young' thing either. It's more to do with looking good and being confident than looking handsome or like a supermodel."
Life coach Zoe Jones says women believe attractiveness is the key to work success because they are constantly bombarded with images of the perfect woman.
"We see celebrities who seem to have it all. We read reports and success stories about women who do it all and we are being given tips all the time of how to achieve it - and they all look fabulous with it," she says.
"What we don't appreciate is that this is not the full picture - the celebrities with successful careers have a team around them who are dedicated to making them look good and the reports we read are there because they are newsworthy. This means they are not the norm and we should use them as inspiration, not a benchmark."
Jones says women may feel they have to act like men at work to keep pace in a competitive and traditionally male domain.
led light tubes "Women are great communicators while men are goal oriented in general and life at work tends to be goal oriented, so in order to succeed women have had to take more of a direct approach with less feeling and more action."
But Connolly believes many firms are beginning to realise the value of different approaches. "When companies are appointi
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