Business Opportunities Weblog

November 2, 2010 by Angela Shupe | 0 Comments

For a few months in the 60′s Marni Wieshofer and a colleague worked together at a company in Australia. Women like them were so rare in business at that time that they became somewhat famous. Despite there being so few women in her industry, Marni worked hard to enter into the business and dominate reports The Globe and Mail.

She was enrolled in Rotman’s part-time MBA program and working full-time when she had the first of her three sons in 1990, and she found both her university and employer supportive, allowing her to continue her work and studies with baby in tow while she was breastfeeding. “I didn’t want to take six or 12 months of maternity leave,” she says. “So I told them that ‘If you want me here, the baby comes too.’ No one ever said no.”

Most female MBA graduates aren’t Ms. Wieshofer, though. A 2009 study by the Berkley Haas School of Business found that, when faced with the prospect of breastfeeding in the boardroom, a surprising number drop out of the work force. MBA graduates are more likely to become stay-at-home moms than medicine or law grads. While female enrolment in most medical and law schools has neared or exceeded 50 per cent, MBA programs continue to lag behind; typically, only 25 per cent of students in traditional programs are women.

Is there something about MBA programs or the upper echelons of business that is inherently unwelcoming to women?

Yes, says Elisabeth Kelan, a lecturer in the department of management at King’s College, London, in Britain. In the March, 2010, issue of the academic journal Academy of Management Learning and Education, Dr. Kelan argued that MBA programs perpetuate biases that persist in the corporate world by teaching to “male values” − such as competitiveness and individualism − and that a curriculum overhaul is necessary if MBA schools hope to attract more women.

Photo by Kevin Dooley

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Tags: Education, Women