A full-time stay-at-home mother would earn $134,121 a year if paid for all her work, an amount similar to a top U.S. ad executive, a marketing director or a judge, according to a study released on Wednesday.

A mother who works outside the home would earn an extra $85,876 annually on top of her actual wages for the work she does at home, according to the study by Waltham, Massachusetts-based compensation experts Salary.com.

To reach the projected pay figures, the survey calculated the earning power of the 10 jobs respondents said most closely comprise a mother's role -- housekeeper, day-care teacher, cook, computer operator, laundry machine operator, janitor, facilities manager, van driver, chief executive and psychologist.

"You can't put a dollar value on it. It's worth a lot more," said Kristen Krauss, 35, as she hurriedly packed her four children, all aged under 8, into a minivan in New York while searching frantically for her keys. "Just look at me."

Dr. Anna Fels, a New York-based psychiatrist and author of "Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women's Changing Lives," published in 2004, said that while women's access to education at all levels has improved, their second-class citizenship often kicks in when they hit work.

Alfia Muzio, 23, who graduated from Columbia University in New York last spring, said that entering the work force can be "exciting and full of promise."

But she also said it can be lonely and intimidating. "The men at my office are totally inappropriate," she said. "They say things of a sexual nature, commenting on appearance in an unwelcome way using 'honey' or 'sweetie' instead of names. It gets very uncomfortable. One guy actually just got fired for sexual harassment. That kind of stuff would have never happened in college."

According to Equal Employment Opportunity Commissions statistics, women filed 85 percent of all sexual harassment charges in 2004.

One factor may be scarcity. In fields like engineering, a company may get one woman and seven men applying for a job, Farrell said. If the company wants to hire the woman, they may have to pay a premium to get her.

That's because she may have more competing offers than her male counterparts. The reason: not only is she a top performer who can boost a company's profitability but employing her helps a company improve its equal-opportunity standing, which in turn can help it secure government contracts.

Also, where women can combine technical expertise with people skills – such as those required in sales and other arenas where customers may prefer dealing with a woman - that's likely to contribute to a premium in pay.

"She gives people the best of both worlds," Farrell said.

The report, based on a survey of those who gave birth for the first time between 1961 and 2000, shows more mothers-to-be working during pregnancy, often into the final month.

About 57% of new mothers in 1996-2000 had worked full time while pregnant compared with about 40% in 1961-65. And of those employed between 1996 and 2000, more than half worked into the last month of pregnancy. After giving birth, 65% returned to work within a year.

Women with a higher education level are likely to be in higher-paying jobs and tend to stay on the job longer while pregnant and return sooner, the report suggests.

According to The Economist magazine, for example, the U.S. government's Glass Ceiling Commission reported in 1995 that women held 45.7 percent of all jobs in the nation but only 5 percent of senior manager positions.

Ten years later, in 2005, women made up 46.5 percent of the work force, but the number in top management positions -- despite the increased publicity given to the issue and recommendations of the Glass Ceiling Commission -- had only grown to less than 8 percent.

Today's work structure was constructed by and to suit men in the days when the husband went to work and the wife stayed home and looked after the home and family. The perceived wisdom was that the husband, after a stressful 9-5 day at the office, returned to the bosom of his family to be soothed and fortified for the next day. Today, it is still widely accepted -- by women as well as men -- that the nurturing role remains the province of women.

Start building a network early on in your career. You can do this by joining professional organizations, but you have to keep building and maintaining your relationships. For women who are working, this is hard. You are spending long hours at work, so it's difficult to go to a networking event, workshop or seminar at night. But we recommend that women build those relationships by attending these conferences and workshops. It could be meetings of alumni of their college, in-house training offered at their company or a networking reception. You should get to know your colleagues in the industry.

Also, networking is relationship building, so when you meet someone, it is best to nurture that relationship, even if you believe that the person can't do anything for you in the here and now. You may be surprised by how they can impact your career down the road or vice-versa.

You should be connecting over outside activities. Women sometimes have a tendency to talk shop at business events. At Pace, we offer a workshop called "Schmoozing," which is about the art of small talk. You have to learn how to schmooze, since that's the beginning of networking. Schmooze first, and then the networking and professional activities will follow, whether you want them to or not.

According to Heather Boushey, an economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, women with children "earn from 3 to 10 percent less per child compared to employed women without children."

Boushey adds that when the figures are further broken down, "there is a bigger penalty for women with children for their second child than for their first."

The numbers: For the first child a woman has, the wage differential in comparison to nonmothers is from 2 to 10 percent less.

For the second child, the gap is from 4 to 16 percent less than for women with no children.