The Gender Initiative catalyzes and translates cutting-edge research to transform practice, enable leaders to drive change, and eradicate gender, race, and other forms of inequality in business and society.
Valentina Tereshkova: Conquering Space
- July 2020 (Revised October 2020)
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- Faculty Research
On June 13, 1963, Valentina Tereshkova of the USSR became the first woman to fly in
space on Vostok 6. Soviet leaders publicly espoused gender equity, but also sent Tereshkova
on her mission in order to be the first country to send a woman to space, a milestone
they reached before the U.S. did...
Unleashed: The Unapologetic Leader's Guide to Empowering Everyone Around You
- 2020
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- Faculty Research
When leaders and aspiring leaders seek out advice, they're often told to try harder...
Why the Crisis Is Putting Companies at Risk of Losing Female Talent
- May 5, 2020
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- Harvard Business Review Digital Articles
There has been a massive shift in how work gets done inside many companies and the
global pivot to working remotely will likely change how many think about face time
and rigid work schedules...
Leading Your Team Past the Peak of a Crisis
- April 30, 2020
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- Harvard Business Review (website)
In the middle of a crisis, everything looks like a failure...
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The pandemic has been an economic disaster for women. Some took advantage of it.
Re: Debora Spar
- 21 Jan 2021
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- Washington Post
Early on, the data was “pretty clear that the pandemic recession would be a disaster for women,” said Debora Spar, professor and senior associate dean at Harvard Business School and author of “Work Mate Marry Love: How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny” and “Wonder Women: Sex, Power, and the Quest for Perfection.”

Two Books Wonder: How Long Until You Fall in Love With a Robot?
Re: Debora Spar
- 11 Sep 2020
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- New York Times
One such interpreter is Debora L. Spar, the dean of Harvard Business School Online, who writes at the intersection of tech and gender. In her new book, “Work Mate Marry Love,” she considers an emerging wave of innovations that she believes could upend how we experience relationships, reproduction, gender expression and death. “We will fall in love with nonhuman beings,” Spar predicts in the book’s opening pages, “and find ways to extend our human lives into something that begins to approximate forever.” Spar argues that new technologies spark shifts in the most intimate of human affairs, often in unexpected ways. She casts this as a causal relationship, one imbued with a sense of inevitability. The book’s subtitle, “How Machines Shape Our Human Destiny,” gives the machines the agency.

Women in Science May Suffer Lasting Career Damage from COVID-19
- 12 Aug 2020
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- Scientific American
“The pandemic has involved much more than simply forcing scientists to work from home,” says Kyle Myers, a co-author of the survey of U.S. and European scientists and an economist at Harvard Business School. “It has forced them to manage childcare in new ways, prevented serendipitous conversations in the office hallways, and limited their ability to attend conferences or work at field sites or access certain equipment.”
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