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And thanks for listening. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review. I'm Sarah Green.

I'm here today with Harvard Business School Professor Boris

Broisberg and Deborah Bell a researcher of organizational behavior.

Thank you both so much for joining us today.

Thank you for having us.

Thank you, yes.

So today I wanted to talk a little bit about the interesting findings that you came up with when you

guys were looking at the women who become board members and sort of what comprises that group

and what sets them apart from men what they have in common with male board members and how

they're different. One of the things that surprised me in your findings given the

state of these statistics is that a lot of the male board directors didn't

think that their female peers

faced any additional hurdles. Why do you think that is?

Well let me think that's a great question. Let me just give you maybe that's going to

be helpful just a little bit of a background for this research project because it's going to shed some light on your question as well as the answer.

Deborah and I, we got really interested in this and also in collaboration with

W.C. as a woman corporate director and Hydrokin Struggles.

Just to kind of understand why do we have this persistent gender gap right at the highest

...