The symposium comprises presentations of seven research projects on the phenomenon of women on corporate boards. The global author team (18 authors from 9 countries and 15 institutions) will share their latest findings. The diversity of topics (i.e., gender quota legislation, director role identities, board composition-firm performance relationship), theories (i.e., welfare state, political systems, institutions, agency, path dependency, social role identity, human capital, social capital, sensemaking), data and methodologies (i.e., interviews with board members, secondary data, UCINET, logistic regression, content analysis), and country environments (i.e., detailed discussion of Australia, France, Germany, Iceland, India, Italy, Norway, Spain, UK, US; mention of 25 other countries) is deliberate, and expected to stimulate a rich debate of findings and discussion of critical future developments in the field. This is the first opportunity that each paper will be presented to a scholarly audience; however all the papers are well developed with interesting analyses of respective data. Additionally, we will provide time in the symposium to invite audience members to share their perspectives on these findings and any findings from their related research. We expect that the symposium will be of interest to GDO members due to the focus on women in top management roles, to BPS given the interest in the relationship between board composition and firm outcomes and comparative corporate governance models and policy; and CAR given the focus on women’s (and to some degree men’s) careers. Moreover, the four lead papers are directly related to the All-Academy theme of “Capitalism in Question” as they examine the relationship between various capitalism institutions (e.g., welfare state regime, financial crisis, other national political and economic institutions) on women on corporate boards (e.g., government legislation of mandatory gender quotas, firm performance outcomes, social identities). If accepted, we intend to promote the symposium among the large community of women on boards researchers. To our knowledge, a caucus for women on boards has not been proposed this year, so this symposium would be the main opportunity for this community to collectively gather at AOM. Legislating a seat on the board: Factors driving gender quotas for boards of directors Presenter: Siri Ann Terjesen; Indiana U., Bloomington International consequences of the Norwegian gender balance law Presenter: Mariateresa Torchia; Tor Vergata U. Presenter: Morten Huse; BI Norwegian Business School Presenter: Cathrine Seierstad; U. of Brunel Presenter: Gillian Warner-Söderholm; BI Norwegian Business School Making sense of non-traditional CEO appointments: The Case of Female CEOs Presenter: Jennifer Miner Knippen; McIntire School of Commerce, U. of Virginia Presenter: Richard John Gentry; U. of Mississippi Human capital and professional network capital characteristics of women and men board directors Presenter: Renuka Hodigere; Case Western Reserve U. Presenter: Diana Bilimoria; Case Western Reserve U. Directors' role identities in pre and post crisis Iceland: Board life cycle stage and gender Presenter: Val Singh; Cranfield U. Presenter: Thoranna Jonsdottir; Reykjavik U. Presenter: Susan Vinnicombe; Cranfield U. Women on corporate boards: Firm performance and responses to legislative impetus in France and Spain Presenter: Maria Gonzalez Menendez; U. de Oviedo Presenter: Mark Smith; Grenoble Ecole de Management Pathways to board directorship among women in India: An exploratory Study Presenter: Vasanthi Srinivasan; HHL Graduate School of Management Leipzig; Indian Institute of Management Bangalore Presenter: Alison M. Konrad; U. of Western Ontario Presenter: Lisa T. Stickney; U. of Baltimore