Women in Business

To ensure that refugees are able to rebuild their lives in dignity and safety, complex challenges must be addressed. By providing microfinancing opportunities, as well as business and self-care education, EMPROPAZ has transformed the lives of Colombian entrepreneurs and Venezuelan migrants, and by extension, host communities across Colombia.

Darden Ideas to Action insights draw from faculty expertise, books, research, cases and white papers. Here: the most read stories of 2022. How can one build a brand? What happens when buzz turns to backlash? How does a strategist prepare for the unforeseeable? What inequalities to women face in feedback? And why is storytelling an essential skill?

The argument in favor of diversity and inclusion is robust. The benefits are clear. As our populations change, diverse groups of talent are emerging, and they are emerging fast. However, corporations and businesses are still lagging hard behind the pace of this change. So what’s holding us back?

Research shows that, compared to men, positive feedback for women often conforms to gender stereotypes and is more generic. Without the same constructive encouragement, women may not only fail to see their contributions as equal in value, but also miss out on the opportunity to learn. How can we redress the praise deficit?

How do you spread your influence across an organization? How do you ensure that the right systems or processes are in place to hire the outstanding talent you need? And what if you’re not in the C-suite — what can you do to improve the structures, procedures or design mechanisms within your organization if you’re a midlevel leader?

Negotiation doesn’t have to be a battle, but an exchange that advances careers and builds relationships. For women, this perspective can tap into expectations others have of “female” strengths, as well as some competencies many already use. Here, drawn from research on negotiation and gender: techniques to achieve constructive, win-win outcomes.

Business decisions can be daunting; risk is a factor, stakes can be high, and analysis may integrate both quantitative and intangible dimensions. In the pursuit of more and better data, decision-makers should not neglect another essential element of the process: the evaluation of all possible outcomes.

Positive deviance is about how we can deviate from the norm in ways that are honorable and generative, authentic, and that have positive impact and open the door to others to do the same. Leveraging difference — mobilizing gender identity and minority status in this way — can activate a slew of personal, organizational and societal benefits.

We are in the midst of a crisis in child care. That’s not just for the parents or children directly and presently affected; if we don’t invest in quality care now, society will literally pay for it later. The matter touches issues of health, income, crime, IQ, costs to families and the public, and an individual’s ability to maintain employment.

Sexism and rudeness: not mutually exclusive. New research shows that rudeness can hide sexism, as observers may dismiss perpetrators as “equal-opportunity jerks.” Darden professors explain how the phenomenon not only turns bad behavior into plausible deniability, it can also serve as a barrier to addressing sexism in the workplace.