The purposes of this handbook are to provide a forum for presentation of the current state of knowledge about women in business and management and to specify the directions for future research that will be most constructive for advancing the representation, treatment, quality of life and success of women who work in these fi elds. In this sense, we hope that the Handbook on Women in Business and Management will serve as a reference for recent advances in research and theory, informing both

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... ars and those with a general interest in the subject. From the early days of inquiry into women and work (a collation of early research appeared in Larwood et al.'s (1986) Volume 1 of their Women and Work edited series) the topic of women in business and management has continued to garner interest by research scholars. A few specialized academic journals are devoted entirely to this and related topics of gender and work (for example, Equal Opportunities International, Gender, Work and Organization, Sex Roles, Women in Management Review), with special issues of these and other journals (for example, British Journal of Management, Journal of Organization Change Management), past and upcoming, focused on pertinent sub-topics such as women's career advancement, women and leadership, work-life integration, women corporate directors, and the gendering of work and organization. Within the past two decades, published research on women in business and management has mushroomed; several books and textbooks (for example,