Charlotte Townsend

Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior • Professor

Modern Frankfurt School building with glass entrance and landscaped green lawn.

Assistant Professor of Organizational Behavior

Charlotte Townsend is an Assistant Professor in Organizational Behavior at the Frankfurt School of Finance & Management. Her research explores three interrelated lines of inquiry: how gender impacts interpersonal perceptions, why systems that preserve gender inequality persist, and how gender roles and beliefs constrain women’s opportunities, particularly in the work-family context. She employs a multi-method, adaptive approach — involving archival and textual data analysis, online and lab experiments, surveys, and qualitative interviews — with diverse samples, including dual-career couples, high-achieving alumni, students, and online representative populations.

Charlotte Townsend holds a PhD in Management of Organizations from the University of California, Berkeley's Haas School of Business, and a B.S. in Economics and a B.A. in Psychology from Carnegie Mellon University.

Management department
Professor
Faculty

PUBLICATIONS

Townsend, C., Kray, L., Delecourt, S., 2026. People prefer to negotiate with women, even when outcomes are identical and gender is unknown, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences Vol. 123(26 (e2523202123)).

Kray, L., Mishra, S., Townsend, C., Kennedy, J., 2026. Psychological drivers of gender disparities in leadership paths, Trends in Cognitive Sciences Vol. 30(6), pp. 515-529.

Townsend, C., Kray, L., Russell, A., 2024. Holding the Belief That Gender Roles Can Change Reduces Women's Work-Family Conflict, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin Vol. 50(11), pp. 1613-1632.

Townsend, C., Mishra, S., Kray, L., 2024. Not All Powerful People Are Created Equal: An Examination of Gender and Pathways to Social Hierarchy Through the Lens of Social Cognition, Psychological Science Vol. 35(9), pp. 962-975.

Hart, C., Townsend, C., Delecourt, S., 2024. Who Believes Gender Research? How Readers' Gender Shapes the Evaluation of Gender Research, Social Psychology Quarterly Vol. 87(4), pp. 501-512.