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PurposeLabeling women as risk‐averse limits the positive benefits both women and organizations can gain from their risk taking. The purpose of this paper is to explore women's risk taking and reasons for stereotype persistence in order to inform human resource practice and women's career development.Design/methodology/approachThe paper draws on literature about gender and organizations to identify reasons for the persisting stereotype of women's risk aversion. Utilizing literature and concepts about risk appetite and decision making, the paper evaluates results of the Simmons Gender and Risk Survey database of 661 female managers.FindingsThe paper finds evidence of gender neutrality in risk propensity and decision making in specific managerial contexts other than portfolio allocation.Research limitations/implicationsMore in‐depth research is needed to explore the gender‐neutral motivators of risk decision making and to explore risk taking in a more diverse sample population.Practical implicationsThe paper explores why women's risk taking remains invisible even as they take risks and offers suggestions on how women and organizations may benefit from their risk‐taking activities.Originality/valueThe paper synthesizes evidence on risk taking and gender, and the evidence of female risk taking is an important antidote to persisting stereotypes. The paper outlines reasons for this stereotype persistence and implications for human resource development.

"Corporate credit spreads are large, volatile, countercyclical, and significantly larger than expected losses, but existing macroeconomic models with financial frictions fail to reproduce these patterns, because they imply small and constant aggregate risk premia. Building on the idea that corporate debt, while safe in normal times, is exposed to the risk of economic depression, this paper embeds a trade-off theory of capital structure into a real business cycle model with a small, time-varying risk of large economic disaster. This simple feature generates large, volatile and countercyclical credit spreads as well as novel business cycle implications. In particular, financial frictions substantially amplify the effect of shocks to the disaster probability"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site