Publications

2010
Working Paper

Men as Cultural Ideals: How Culture Shapes Gender Stereotypes

By: Amy J.C. Cuddy, Susan Crotty, Jihye Chong and Michael I. Norton

Three studies demonstrate how culture shapes the contents of gender stereotypes, such that men are perceived as possessing more of whatever traits are culturally valued. In Study 1, Americans rated men as less interdependent than women; Koreans, however, showed the... View Details

Keywords: Prejudice and Bias; Perception; Values and Beliefs; Gender; Culture; Power and Influence

Forthcoming
Article

Gender and Preferences for Performance Feedback

By: Katherine Baldiga Coffman and David Klinowski

Across multiple studies, we investigate whether there are gender differences in preferences for receiving performance feedback. We vary many features of the feedback context: whether the performance task is a cognitive test or a mock interview, whether the feedback is... View Details

Keywords: Feedback; Gender; Cognition and Thinking; Motivation and Incentives; Behavior

March 2018 (Revised March 2019)
Case

Gender and Free Speech at Google (A)

By: Nien-hê Hsieh, Martha J. Crawford and Sarah Mehta

In August 2017, Google fired James Damore, a 28-year-old software engineer who had been employed by the company since 2013. The move came after Damore penned an internal company memo titled “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber,” which posited that innate biological... View Details

Keywords: Free Speech; Representation; Diversity; Gender; Race; Human Resources; Employees; Employee Relationship Management; Recruitment; Selection and Staffing; Labor; Employment; Lawsuits and Litigation; Organizational Culture; Technology Industry; United States; California

21 Feb 2013
Research & Ideas

HBS Research Focuses on Gender Issues and Fixes

business management. Here are recent articles and working papers on faculty research that focus on gender issues in the workplace and offer specific actions that companies can use to address them. We will be highlighting more work in this... View Details

23 Mar 2016
Research & Ideas

Researchers Prove C-Suite Gender Gap—but Can’t Explain It

Here’s some bad news and some worse news for women who aspire to the executive suite. The bad news is that there’s a huge gender gap in top corporate positions, both in terms of the number of female executives and how much money they make... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

2012
Working Paper

An Outside-Inside Evolution in Gender and Professional Work

By: Lakshmi Ramarajan, Kathleen McGinn and Deborah Kolb

We study the process by which a professional service firm reshaped its activities and beliefs over nearly two decades as it adapted to shifts in the social discourse regarding gender and work. Analyzing archival data from the firm over eighteen years and... View Details

Keywords: Professional Service Firms; Social Institutions; Organizational Learning; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Employment; Gender; Society; Service Industry

SSRN

May 2020
Article

Inventor Gender and the Direction of Invention

By: Rembrand Koning, Sampsa Samila and John-Paul Ferguson

We study whether increasing the share of female inventors leads to more biomedical inventions that focus on the needs of women. After accounting for detailed disease-technology, disease-year, and technology-year fixed effects, we find that a 10 percentage point... View Details

Keywords: Innovation and Invention; Gender; Patents

17 Dec 2012
Working Paper Summaries

An Outside-Inside Evolution in Gender and Professional Work

Keywords: by Lakshmi Ramarajan, Kathleen McGinn & Deborah Kolb

2021
Working Paper

The Old Boys' Club: Schmoozing and the Gender Gap

By: Zoë B. Cullen and Ricardo Perez-Truglia

Offices are social places. Employees and managers take breaks together and talk about family and hobbies. In this study, we show that employees’ social interactions with their managers can be advantageous for their careers, and that this phenomenon contributes to the... View Details

Keywords: Career; Promotions; Social Interactions; Networking; Gender; Personal Development and Career; Wages; Social and Collaborative Networks

March 1995
Background Note

Gender Differences in Managerial Behavior: The Ongoing Debate

Do men and women have distinct leadership styles? Do they approach management differently? This note summarizes the two perspectives that have dominated the ongoing debate on gender differences in organizational leadership and management behavior. Psychological... View Details

Keywords: Leadership Style; Gender

15 Feb 2014
Conference Presentation

Men as Cultural Ideals: How Culture Shapes Gender Stereotypes

By: Amy Cuddy, Elizabeth Baily Wolf, Peter Glick and Michael I. Norton

Four studies test whether cultural values moderate the content of gender stereotypes, such that male stereotypes more closely align with core cultural values (specifically, individualism vs. collectivism) than do female stereotypes. In Studies 1 and 2, using different... View Details

Keywords: Stereotypes; Gender; United States; South Korea

March–April 2020
Article

An Institutional Approach to Gender Diversity and Firm Performance

By: Letian Zhang

This study examines data from 35 countries and 24 industries to understand the relationship between gender diversity and firm performance. Previous studies report conflicting evidence: some find that gender-diverse firms experience more positive performance and others... View Details

Keywords: Institutional Theory; Cross-cultural; Diversity; Gender; Organizations; Performance; Situation or Environment; Cross-Cultural and Cross-Border Issues

14 Dec 2016
Book

Simple Ways to Take Gender Bias Out of Your Job Ads

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel

13 Nov 2019
Working Paper Summaries

The Gender Gap in Self-Promotion

Keywords: by Christine L. Exley and Judd B. Kessler

April 2022
Case

Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?

By: Boris Groysberg and Colleen Ammerman

"Gender Equality in Business: 100 Years of Progress?" 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 case identifies six distinct phases in 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

17 Oct 2019
Research & Ideas

‘Chick Beer’ for Women? Why Gender Marketing Repels More Than Sells

considered if the company hadn’t hyped their gender, according to a study by Harvard Business School. Why do these gender appeals alienate the very audience they aim to attract? People resist being categorized—or made to feel like they... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman; Consumer Products

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

July 2021
Article

Consumers—Especially Women—Avoid Buying from Firms with Higher Gender Pay Gaps

By: Tobias Schlager, Bhavya Mohan, Katherine DeCelles and Michael I. Norton

We document a unique driver of consumer behavior: the public disclosure of a firm’s gender pay gap. Four experiments provide causal evidence that when firms are revealed to have gender pay gaps, consumers are less willing to pay for their goods, a reaction driven by... View Details

Keywords: Pay Gap; Perceived Wage Fairness; Purchase Intention; Gender; Wages; Fairness; Perception; Consumer Behavior