Introduction to Gender and Work Conference: Challenging Conventional Wisdom, HBS February 28, 2013


The following are my notes from Robin Ely's introduction to the HBS Gender & Work Conference, February 28 2013.

     8 women students joined 676 men students at HBS in 1963; now there's 40% women students at HBS.
     Purpose of this conference: What impact can we have? How can we use our research as a lever for change?
     Mission for the W50 [50th Anniversary of Women at HBS]: Accelerating the advancement of women leaders who make a (positive) difference in the world.
     Nitin Nohria [Dean of HBS] supported this conference, and wanted to make it big; Robin thought to invite ~50 people, then Amy Cuddy joined, created their wish list together (who’re all the cool people we know doing great work on gender), and the list kept getting longer and longer; invited just about everybody and just about everybody came.
     Nitin Noria is a feminist. When Robin asked if it was okay to call him that, Nohria responded that she could call him anything she wanted to, but that it is increasingly unclear what it means to be “a feminist.” Students shy away from the label. Ely responded that being a feminist means being committed to gender equality, and Nohria is in.
     Really makes a difference to have a dean like Nitin Nohria; never really understood just what a difference leadership makes until this extremely supportive dean came along.
     Women MBAs at HBS used to get lower grades than men MBAs. That gap has now closed, thanks to committed action to understand the problem and solve it.
     Nohria made focusing on gender as one of his main priorities when he became dean, and put Robin Ely in the role of conducting a review of HBS and business school culture in general.
     Conference is organized around five topics: Asked people to present papers that they thought might be challenging traditional wisdom.
     20 minute talks, 10 page papers that go with the talks; those papers will be printed & distributed. 
     Asked people to prepare a research-based argument, not a typical academic talk focused on methods and results, but talks focused on ideas.
     Due to a delay in a presenter's flight, we'll start with session 2, then 3, then end with session 1 today.
     Hopefully this conference will foster connections, relationships, and impact.
     Talks are being videotaped, photographers taking pictures of the event.

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