In this paper, we document the historically low rate of hiring of women in the venture capital sector. We find that the high-profile Ellen Pao v. Kleiner Perkins gender discrimination trial had dramatic treatment effects. In difference-in-differences regressions, we find that the rate of hiring...

Women remain disadvantaged in access to management positions around the world. We conduct a field experiment with 24 large garment factories in Bangladesh to test for inefficient representation of women among line supervisors. We identify the marginal female and male candidates for supervisory...

Does the lack of peers contribute to the observed gender gap in entrepreneurial success, and is the constraint stronger for women facing more restrictive social norms? We offered two days of business counseling to a random sample of customers of India's largest women's bank. A random subsample...

This paper studies gender spillovers in career advancement using 11 years of employer-employee matched data on the population of white-collar workers at over 4,000 private-sector establishments in Norway. Our data include unusually detailed job information for each worker, which enables us to...

In late 2003, Norway passed a law mandating 40 percent representation of each gender on the board of public limited liability companies. The primary objective of this reform was to increase the representation of women in top positions in the corporate sector and decrease the gender disparity in...

In most organizations, promotions often require self-nomination and competition among applicants. However, research on gender differences in preferences for competition suggests that this process might result in fewer women choosing to participate. We study whether changing promotion schemes...

Are the political preferences of CEOs associated with the representation and compensation of women in the executive suite? We find that Democratic CEOs (those who contribute more to Democratic candidates) are associated with higher representation of women in the executive suite. To explore...

Commerce requires trust, but trust is difficult when one group consistently fears expropriation by another. If men have a comparative advantage at violence and there is little rule-of-law, then unequal bargaining power can lead women to segregate into low-return industries and avoid...

Exploiting random variation in the number of venture capitalist (VC) judges assigned to panels at Harvard Business School's New Venture Competition (NVC) between 2000 and 2015, we find that exposure to more VC judges increases male participants' chances of founding a VC-backed startup after HBS...

We study shareholder support for corporate board nominees in the context of the California gender quota, which was passed in 2018. Using hand-collected data for approximately 600 firms, we show that, prior to the quota, female nominees received greater shareholder support than their male...