Publications

April 2022
Teaching Note

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Teaching Note for HBS Case No. 422-066, "Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" The case traces the history of women in management from the early 20th to early 21st century through analysis of Harvard Business Review's coverage of women and gender. The... View Details

Keywords: History; Business History; Gender; Management; Employees; Leadership; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Work-Life Balance; Prejudice and Bias; Social Issues; Diversity; Equity; United States

2024
Working Paper

A Gender Backlash: Does Exposure to Female Labor Market Participation Fuel Gender Conservatism?

By: Paula Rettl, Diane Bolet, Catherine E. De Vries, Simone Cremaschi, Tarik Abou-Chadi and Sergi Pardos-Prado

The growing participation of women in the labor market has marked a significant societal transformation, coinciding with the rise of gender conservatism and far-right support. We study whether the economic consequences of labor market feminization and gender backlash... View Details

Keywords: Gender Bias; Gender Equality; Gender Inclusivity; Politics; Political Backlash; Political Culture; Conservatism; Gender; Government and Politics; Equality and Inequality; Prejudice and Bias; Labor

2016
Working Paper

Equal Opportunity? Gender Gaps in CEO Appointments and Executive Pay

By: Matti Keloharju, Samuli Knüpfer and Joacim Tåg

This paper uses exceptionally rich data on Swedish corporate executives and their personal characteristics to study gender gaps in CEO appointments and pay. Both gaps are sizeable: 18% for CEO appointments and 27% for pay. At most one-eighth of the gaps can be... View Details

Keywords: Equality and Inequality; Executive Compensation; Gender; Sweden

SSRN

December 2019 (Revised December 2021)
Case

Negotiating for Equal Pay: The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (A)

By: Christine Exley, John Beshears, Manuela Collis and Davis Heniford

In 2019, members of the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (WNT) filed a gender discrimination lawsuit against the U.S. Soccer Federation. The case describes the history of the WNT's quest for equal pay leading up to this event. View Details

Keywords: Equal Pay; Negotiation; Compensation and Benefits; Equality and Inequality; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Negotiation Tactics; Corporate Governance; Lawsuits and Litigation; Sports; Sports Industry; United States

26 Aug 2014
News

A Fair-Trade-Like Certification for Gender Equality

24 Apr 2014
News

Leading change in issues around gender and equality

Harvard Business School Professor Robin Ely discusses the School's leadership role in changing issues and business practices around gender and equality. (Published April 2014) View Details

Winter 2020
Article

Goodfellows: Men's Role and Reason in the Fight for Gender Equality

By: Debora L. Spar

The essay attempts to make the case for including—even embracing—men in the fight for gender equality. If men believe in equality, then expanding that belief to explicitly include women is not a leap of logic or an act of charity. It is instead a basic extension of a... View Details

Keywords: Gender; Diversity; Equality and Inequality

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August 2022
Article

The Gender Gap in Self-Promotion

By: Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

In applications, interviews, performance reviews, and many other environments, individuals are explicitly asked or implicitly invited to assess their own performance. In a series of experiments, we find that women rate their performance less favorably than equally... View Details

Keywords: Self-promotion; Gender Gap; Experiments; Performance Evaluation; Gender

Find at Harvard

January–March 2020
Article

Improving Decisions that Affect Gender Equality in the Workplace

By: Edward H. Chang and Katherine L. Milkman

Find at Harvard

26 May 2014
News

Promoting Gender Equality from HBS to the White House

Keywords: Government

02 Dec 2015
What Do You Think?

What Will It Take to Achieve Gender Equality in Leadership?

easy for some, possibly because of my use of the term “equality” vs. parity or some other concept. Words are important. For example, Hugh Quick asked, “Why does anyone want gender equality?” JW2 commented that the column “Begs the... View Details

Keywords: by James Heskett

29 May 2015
News

The 24/7 Work Culture’s Toll on Families and Gender Equality

12 Apr 2016
News

Equality Takes Work

28 May 2015
News

The 24/7 Work Culture’s Toll on Families and Gender Equality

December 2019 (Revised December 2021)
Supplement

Negotiating for Equal Pay: The U.S. Women's National Soccer Team (B)

By: Christine Exley, John Beshears, Manuela Collis and Davis Heniford

Supplements the (A) case and describes the events following it View Details

Keywords: Equal Pay; Negotiation; Compensation and Benefits; Equality and Inequality; Gender; Prejudice and Bias; Ethics; Negotiation Tactics; Corporate Governance; Lawsuits and Litigation; Sports; Sports Industry; United States

April 2021
Case

Glass-Shattering Leaders: Ros Atkins

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

Ros Atkins launched the 50:50 Project on a BBC news program he anchored, deciding with his team to start tracking the gender of the contributors and experts featured on the show. Before long, it was clear that monitoring the data led to increased awareness of a gender... View Details

Keywords: Gender Equality; Allyship; Representation; Leadership; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Media; Analytics and Data Science

June 2018 (Revised November 2018)
Case

Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn: The Power of Writing to Launch and Sustain a Movement

By: Julie Battilana, Lakshmi Ramarajan and Michael Norris

In 2018, New York Times writer Nicholas Kristof and his wife, former Times writer Sheryl WuDunn (HBS ’86) who worked in finance, were planning for their next book. The couple’s earlier books had given rise to social movements around gender equity and poverty issues.... View Details

Keywords: Social Movement; Gender Equality; Writing; Social Issues; Gender; Equality and Inequality; Poverty; Books; Change; Leadership