Bridging the Gender Gap: Seven Principles for Achieving Gender Balance

Despite decades of efforts to promote gender equality, most leadership positions in business, politics, education, and even NGOs are occupied by men, and most people still work in occupations dominated by one sex.
This book argues that gender imbalances in leadership and occupations are not simply a moral issue or an economic issue, but a governance issue. Gender imbalances persist in large part because the very people with the authority and influence to do something about them know very little about gender and how it works in their organizations and in society at large. Gender imbalanced governance is an expression of entrenched ideas about masculinity and femininity that lead to poor decision making. Improving the quality of governance requires action to counteract the main justifications for the status quo.

Based on interviews and conversations with leaders and managers in Europe and the United States, the book presents seven of the most common explanations for persistent gender imbalances and shows how they are based on common stereotypes and myths about men's and women's abilities and preferences. This book provides a guided tour of current research about gender from a multi-disciplinary perspective. It challenges commonly held assumptions and offers alternative explanations and corresponding principles to guide individual decisions, action, and behaviour toward achieving gender balance.

Lynn Roseberry, Associate Professor and Equal Opportunities Officer, Copenhagen Business School,Johan Roos, CEO and Professor, Jonkoping International Business School

Dr. Lynn Roseberry, J.D., LL.M., Ph.D. has more than 20 years of experience working with gender issues as a lawyer, scholar, and in university management in the United States and Europe. She is a tenured associate professor in the Department of Management, Politics, and Philosophy, Copenhagen Business School, where she also serves as the Business School's first Equal Opportunity Officer. Dr. Roseberry has a broad educational background including a bachelor's degree in religious studies from Yale University, and degrees in law from Arizona State University (J.D.), Harvard Law School (LL.M.), and Copenhagen Business School (Ph.D.). She has represented women in sex discrimination, domestic violence, and child custody cases and written about feminist legal theory, discrimination law, and issues concerning women's reproductive freedom.

Dr. Johan Roos, MSc., Ph.D. is a Swedish national with 25 years of experience in management research, teaching and academic leadership. He has held positions at Wharton School, BI Norwegian Business School, Stockholm School of Economics, and at IMD in Switzerland. Dr. Roos was the founding CEO of Swiss-based Imagination Lab Foundation. He has been President of Copenhagen Business School and is currently CEO of Jonkoping International Business School, where he is also Professor of Strategy. Dr. Roos has published 11 books plus dozens of articles on the need to innovate leadership processes in organizations, especially in strategy making. As an advisor and board member of several corporations, he continually works with corporate leaders in a wide range of industries on five continents. He is an elected member of the Danish Academy of the Technical Sciences, co-inventor of LEGO Serious PlayRG and chaired the Danish government's international Design Vision 2020 committee.