Women make up only one-third of MBA students, well below the average for medical and law schools
After months of correspondence work and a week-long intensive lecture series at Halifax’s Dalhousie University, Sandra Larin sat down to write the final exam for one of her MBA courses.
She soon heard crying outside the room. The door opened and Larin’s mother entered the exam room Larin shared with one other female student, carrying Larin’s screaming and hungry six-week-old daughter Natasha.
“I breastfed her, holding her in one arm, while typing the exam with the other hand,” said Larin.
When Larin, who lives in Toronto, began working on her MBA, paid for by her employer the Bank of Montreal, she found out she was pregnant with her first child. Two and a half years and another baby later, she said she couldn’t do the program without the support of her family, her employer and the university.
“The bank is very, very supportive. It steps up when you need something or want something,” she said. “At school you get special treatment if you need it. But I don’t feel any different from anybody else — I just have a baby there. That’s truly inclusive.”
Unfortunately, not every woman is as lucky as Larin or as capable at juggling all the competing demands of work, family and studies. A survey by Queen’s School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., found the majority of women business leaders feel women face multiple roadblocks to enrolling in MBA programs. At the top of the list of barriers are family responsibilities and financial resources.
“Women still are the primary caregivers of children and women still do the majority of work in the household,” said David Saunders, the dean of the business school. The added responsibilities of children and work make it very difficult for women to take on the course work that’s required to complete an MBA, he said.
According to Catalyst, a New York-based advisory group that promotes women in business, women represent about 30 per cent of the students in North American MBA programs. Saunders said at Queen’s this number can vary from 15 to 18 per cent in the executive MBA program and 30 to 35 per cent in the full-time program. This is in stark contrast to the undergraduate business programs as well as medical and law schools where women usually make up about half of the student body.
Women who don’t have an MBA, for whatever reason, are at a disadvantage in the business world, according to the Queen’s study, which also asked executives about the value of the degree. Seventy-eight per cent said they would choose a candidate with an MBA over one without if all other factors were equal. When women are left out, society pays the price, said Saunders.
“Fifty per cent of the population is women and if we’re not accessing that, from a purely national competitiveness perspective, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. There are some very talented people but if they’re feeling like they can’t participate in ways that they would like to participate, then we’ve got a broader problem in society,” he said. “I think that’s something that we can work on both within business schools and businesses.”
To help women overcome these barriers, employers need to be more supportive, and not just in the financial sense, said Saunders. Employers also need to help employees manage their work tasks so they can balance work, family and school, he said.
To increase family support, the Queen’s School of Business invites students’ families to spend a day at school to see what the parent or spouse goes through. This helps the other spouse and the children understand the types of pressure and time commitment the partner or parent faces, said Saunders.
When Beatrix Dart, academic director for the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management’s executive MBA program, found out about the Queen’s study, she was surprised that the lack of female role models wasn’t higher on the list of barriers women face.
Only six per cent of women said this was a problem, compared to the 2000 Catalyst study, Women and the MBA: Gateway to Opportunity, in which the majority of women MBA graduates polled cited the lack of female role models as the main barrier to doing the program.
“Women still don’t see where this career will lead them if they do a business degree,” said Dart. “If you look at the 50 Best Employers in Canada, surprise, surprise, all the top CEOs are male. Why aren’t there more women up there? It’s a lack of qualified women available to take on these positions and that comes from not enough women doing business degrees.”
She said there is still a lot of gender stereotyping about women leaders — that they’re not good problem solvers and that men take charge while women take care. Even some women buy into the idea that they’re not good at math and therefore think they can’t do a business degree. However, Dart said the MBA focuses on leadership skills where women tend to excel such as emotional intelligence, team building and negotiation and communication skills.
“Women already have a huge advantage to build on these skills to become good leaders, but often they lack the confidence and then they face the stereotype that women aren’t good leaders. The fallout of the stereotypes is still really damaging,” said Dart.
To help women overcome these stereotypes and barriers, the Rotman School of Management set up mentoring and coaching programs for all students and a scholarship specifically for women. At Queen’s, successful women alumni return and speak with the students at formal and informal events.
As for Larin, if there’s one thing the MBA and motherhood have taught her, it’s time management.
“It’s hard to find the time to get to assignments or do the reading and spend time with the kids,” she said. “You just get smarter with your time.”
She soon heard crying outside the room. The door opened and Larin’s mother entered the exam room Larin shared with one other female student, carrying Larin’s screaming and hungry six-week-old daughter Natasha.
“I breastfed her, holding her in one arm, while typing the exam with the other hand,” said Larin.
When Larin, who lives in Toronto, began working on her MBA, paid for by her employer the Bank of Montreal, she found out she was pregnant with her first child. Two and a half years and another baby later, she said she couldn’t do the program without the support of her family, her employer and the university.
“The bank is very, very supportive. It steps up when you need something or want something,” she said. “At school you get special treatment if you need it. But I don’t feel any different from anybody else — I just have a baby there. That’s truly inclusive.”
Unfortunately, not every woman is as lucky as Larin or as capable at juggling all the competing demands of work, family and studies. A survey by Queen’s School of Business at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont., found the majority of women business leaders feel women face multiple roadblocks to enrolling in MBA programs. At the top of the list of barriers are family responsibilities and financial resources.
“Women still are the primary caregivers of children and women still do the majority of work in the household,” said David Saunders, the dean of the business school. The added responsibilities of children and work make it very difficult for women to take on the course work that’s required to complete an MBA, he said.
According to Catalyst, a New York-based advisory group that promotes women in business, women represent about 30 per cent of the students in North American MBA programs. Saunders said at Queen’s this number can vary from 15 to 18 per cent in the executive MBA program and 30 to 35 per cent in the full-time program. This is in stark contrast to the undergraduate business programs as well as medical and law schools where women usually make up about half of the student body.
Women who don’t have an MBA, for whatever reason, are at a disadvantage in the business world, according to the Queen’s study, which also asked executives about the value of the degree. Seventy-eight per cent said they would choose a candidate with an MBA over one without if all other factors were equal. When women are left out, society pays the price, said Saunders.
“Fifty per cent of the population is women and if we’re not accessing that, from a purely national competitiveness perspective, we’re shooting ourselves in the foot. There are some very talented people but if they’re feeling like they can’t participate in ways that they would like to participate, then we’ve got a broader problem in society,” he said. “I think that’s something that we can work on both within business schools and businesses.”
To help women overcome these barriers, employers need to be more supportive, and not just in the financial sense, said Saunders. Employers also need to help employees manage their work tasks so they can balance work, family and school, he said.
To increase family support, the Queen’s School of Business invites students’ families to spend a day at school to see what the parent or spouse goes through. This helps the other spouse and the children understand the types of pressure and time commitment the partner or parent faces, said Saunders.
When Beatrix Dart, academic director for the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management’s executive MBA program, found out about the Queen’s study, she was surprised that the lack of female role models wasn’t higher on the list of barriers women face.
Only six per cent of women said this was a problem, compared to the 2000 Catalyst study, Women and the MBA: Gateway to Opportunity, in which the majority of women MBA graduates polled cited the lack of female role models as the main barrier to doing the program.
“Women still don’t see where this career will lead them if they do a business degree,” said Dart. “If you look at the 50 Best Employers in Canada, surprise, surprise, all the top CEOs are male. Why aren’t there more women up there? It’s a lack of qualified women available to take on these positions and that comes from not enough women doing business degrees.”
She said there is still a lot of gender stereotyping about women leaders — that they’re not good problem solvers and that men take charge while women take care. Even some women buy into the idea that they’re not good at math and therefore think they can’t do a business degree. However, Dart said the MBA focuses on leadership skills where women tend to excel such as emotional intelligence, team building and negotiation and communication skills.
“Women already have a huge advantage to build on these skills to become good leaders, but often they lack the confidence and then they face the stereotype that women aren’t good leaders. The fallout of the stereotypes is still really damaging,” said Dart.
To help women overcome these stereotypes and barriers, the Rotman School of Management set up mentoring and coaching programs for all students and a scholarship specifically for women. At Queen’s, successful women alumni return and speak with the students at formal and informal events.
As for Larin, if there’s one thing the MBA and motherhood have taught her, it’s time management.
“It’s hard to find the time to get to assignments or do the reading and spend time with the kids,” she said. “You just get smarter with your time.”
