A commercial from the parent products company Frida, to be broadcast during the Golden Globes, is part of a wider effort to show the struggles of the “fourth trimester.”

Campaigns promoting female empowerment are all the rage. But women in advertising say they still have to navigate “Mad Men” workplaces.

The emphasis on men with ordinary bodies and others who don’t fit tired stereotypes seems like progress for an industry that, a decade ago, featured a shirtless hunk scented with Old Spice. These days, more and more advertisers are telling men they don’t need to be the buffest or most interesting man in the world, just themselves.

“This is what happens when a reporter refuses to give up on a story,” The Columbia Journalism Review wrote on Twitter on Monday. Geoffrey Berman, a federal prosecutor, said at a news conference that his team had been “assisted by some excellent investigative journalism.”

Jones Day, one of the world’s largest, wealthiest law firms, was sued on Wednesday by six former female associates who accused it of engaging in gender and pregnancy discrimination by underpaying them, thwarting their advancement and pushing them out once they had children.

“Women in manufacturing are much more underrepresented in leadership than they are in other industries, and a lot of that stems from the fact that there are so few women in the industry able to work their way up,” said Anna Beninger, senior research director at Catalyst, a nonprofit focused on women in the workplace.

Denise M. Morrison, weaned on assurances from her father that the future would someday be led by women, yearned for the executive suite years before she occupied it. When she finally reached the top, at Campbell Soup Company in August 2011, she had few female peers in the upper ranks of the largest companies in the United States. Reflecting on her career in an interview with The New York Times last month, Ms. Morrison said she had “wanted to break the glass ceiling,” regardless of the obstacles. “It wasn’t only about me,” she added. “It was about the next generation of women coming behind me.”

For as long as women have been in the labor force, this kind of behind-the-scenes support system has served as a vital source of shared information and a safe space for communal commiseration. Advice on salary negotiations, office politics and the work-life balance would be disseminated through informal conversations at cubicles, in cafeterias and over drinks at happy hour. But the network also allowed employees to clue each other into a spectrum of behavior that was often unseen or ignored by their employers — the boss who scoffs at maternity leave, the manager known for ribald jokes, the colleague rumored to be a groper, or worse.