Northwestern Mutual’s Optimism Barometer – a tool, which measures the attitudes of those who visit the site and weigh in on how they are feeling about, well… life. One of the statements, for example, says “What a person has is less important than who a person is.” And, to this, you can agree or disagree on a scale of 1 – 5.

The barometer seems to indicate an upward trend in positive outlooks of American citizens, despite – shall we say it together? – the economic difficulties we’ve been experiencing as of late.

The most notable data revealed a 60% year-over-year jump in those who scored highest on the scale of optimism. This was shown by comparing the data of the first quarter of last year (2009), when just 25% of those who answered the questionnaire scored between 8 and 10 (10 being the highest score possible) and the data of this year’s first quarter; today, nearly 40% scored this high on the optimism scale.

Greg Oberland, the executive vice president at Northwestern Mutual says, “These results suggest that Americans are, in increasing numbers, accepting the reality of the ‘New Normal’ while also being able to see beyond the immediate challenges of the current economic cycle and remain optimistic about their long-term prospects. We find it encouraging that Americans appear to be widening their time horizons and bringing a long-term approach to how they pursue their goals. It’s something at the very core of what we believe in, and aim to deliver through our process; and it’s a strategy that also has broad applications beyond finances in people’s lives.”

The optimism questionnaire is very easy and takes just a couple minutes. You can see (and answer) for yourself here. The way in which optimists and pessimists answer the questions that were taken from The American Reality Study, commissioned in 2009 by Northwestern Mutual in an attempt to show how Americans are facing the social, economic, and political changes in the U.S. are actually quite distinctive.

It seems that maybe we are collectively seeing the light at the end of the tunnel and believe that light to be a relatively bright one, I’d say.

Though women have definitely made giant strides to gain equality with men in the work world, it seems we are perhaps still not quite there yet. Well, three women are fairly certain that they are not there yet, at least, as they have filed a suit against Bank Of America/Merrill Lynch for allegedly discriminating against them (for being women, that is) while they were working for the company.

All of the women worked as financial advisors, one in New York, the other two in Florida. The same legal team that represented the female financial advisors who sued Smith Barney in a suit that was settled for $33 million in 2008 is representing these three.

They are claiming bias on the basis of gender in account distribution, partnership opportunities; up-front money, pay-out rate, and other benefits of their compensation plans; as well as other opportunities for brokers to increase their income. They are charging that these violations are systemic and based upon company policies and practices, not simply the actions of particular men.

One of these three women, Judy Calibuso, has stated that she was retaliated against after she filed a complaint of discrimination with the Equal Opportunity Commission in 2007. She did this after meeting with her manager and asking for fee-based accounts; he told her he preferred to disperse them to a male colleague. All three are said to have complained internally, after which they were retaliated against.

The women are seeking class action status for their claims against the company, describing a pattern of “cumulative advantage” in which male advisors are given preferred accounts before female who work in the same positions and who are then repeatedly rewarded for their following successes. The suit blames “subjective decision making” of branch managers for this biased pattern.

The discrimination evidently – according to the women – got even worse when the merger of the individual companies of Bank Of America and Merrill Lynch took place. The women have not one giant glaring complaint of bias, but of hundreds of small slights that have added up to cause them to be at a disadvantage to their male counterparts.

At least we have come to a place where women have the right to speak out against the discriminations we still sometimes face and can trust that we will be heard and even deemed as “right” (in the eyes of the law) when we believe we don’t have to just sit back and be second banana, regardless of long-standing, traditional company policies.