While female CEOs are under-represented, the barriers they face in the business environment remain poorly understood. This study investigates the influence of gender bias in forming CEOs' business networks. Using transaction data of 1 million Japanese firms, we find that CEOs of the same gender...

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...

In the 1960s, two landmark statutes--the Equal Pay and Civil Rights Acts--targeted the long-standing practice of employment discrimination against U.S. women. For the next 15 years, the gender gap in median earnings among full-time, full-year workers changed little, leading many scholars and...

We create a dataset of 14,000 hand-coded help-wanted advertisements placed by employment agencies in three U.S. newspapers in 1950 and 1960, a time when help-wanted advertisements were divided into male and female sections, and collect information on agency ownership. We find that female-owned...

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...

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...