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wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome to the HBR Idea Cast from Harvard Business Review.

I'm Sarah Green.

I'm talking today with Joan C. Williams,

Distinguished Professor of Law at the University of California.

Her most recent book is Reshaping work family debate why men and class matter.

She's also co-author with Rachel Dempsey of the forthcoming What Works for Women at Work.

Four Patterns, Every Woman Should Know. Joan Joan thanks so much for talking with us today.

Delighted to be here, Sarah.

So Joan, we're looking at a world in which only 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women and yet almost 60% of college graduates are female

and some of the research HPR has published has shown that women are often perceived as even better managers than men are by their own teams.

So what's going on here?

Why has progress been so slow?

This is what I call the hours problem.

And the hours problem reflects the fact that the way we define full time in these high status jobs is a work pattern that most mothers don't work during the key years of career advancement.

I've been going around asking people what percentage of moms they think works more

than 50 hours a week and a common answer is 50% among my friends and colleagues.

And the real answer is 9%. 9% of mothers work more than 50 hours a week during the key years of career advancement, age 25 to 44.

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