What will it take to create a more gender-balanced workplace?

If you read nothing else on leadership and gender at work, read these 10 articles by experts in the field. We've combed through hundreds of articles in the Harvard Business Review archive and selected the most important ones to help you understand where gender equality is today--and how far we still have to go.

This book will inspire you to:

• • Better understand the path women must take to leadership• Learn the root causes of the barriers that exist for women in the workplace• Check your own gender biases and distinguish between confidence and competence in your colleagues• Manage a more effective gender-diversity program• Recognize the issues women face when speaking up about bias or harassment• Help women reenter the workforce after taking time off--and create opportunities for them to reach their ambitions.

This collection of articles includes "Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership," by Alice H. Eagly and Linda L. Carli; "Do Women Lack Ambition?" by Anna Fels; "Women Rising: The Unseen Barriers," by Herminia Ibarra, Robin Ely, and Deborah Kolb; "Women and the Vision Thing," by Herminia Ibarra and Otilia Obodaru; "The Power of Talk: Who Gets Heard and Why," by Deborah Tannen; "The Memo Every Woman Keeps in Her Desk," by Kathleen Reardon; "Why Diversity Programs Fail," by Frank Dobbin and Alexandra Kalev; "Now What?" by Joan C. Williams and Suzanne Lebsock; "The Battle for Female Talent in Emerging Markets," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid; "Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to Success," by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Carolyn Buck Luce; and "Sheryl Sandberg: The HBR Interview," by Sheryl Sandberg and Adi Ignatius.