BEIJING — For businesswomen gathered at the 20th Global Summit of Women here last week, the title of a talk on the final day of the three-day event, “Working Effectively With Men,” was irresistible.

Women have wondered how to do that all their lives, the conference’s organizer, Irene Natividad, had joked earlier in an interview. “I’ve been at this for two decades, and it keeps popping up,” the longtime women’s rights advocate said. “So I thought, on this, our 20th summit, I’ll have a stab at it.”

Around a century after women won the right to enter parliaments in countries ranging from Azerbaijan to the United States, they are still greatly underrepresented in corporate boardrooms, according to a preliminary report released at the conference by Corporate Women Directors International, a group based in Washington that promotes women in business, and the World Bank’s International Finance Corp.

Seeking answers, hundreds of women gathered around dozens of luncheon tables in a ballroom and listened intently as Ali Faramawy, vice president of Microsoft International, spilled the beans. How could they work effectively with men? What do men say about their female colleagues when they leave the room?