Addressing the MBA gender imbalance

Business schools are striving to increase the proportion of women on their courses

When Gretchen Effgen was choosing a business school, she insists that the attitude to women or the number of female students did not affect her decision. Taking the view that all business schools were pretty much the same in this respect, she says: "I knew I wanted to go to a good business school and I looked at other factors."

Her background in studying international relations and working in Washington DC convinced her that she wanted to study for her MBA in an international environment. She chose London Business School (LBS) for the simple reason that it had that "hands down over any other school".

This will no doubt cheer the school's administrators, who constantly emphasise this, but they are unlikely to allow it to deflect attention from the issue that has been exercising them and their counterparts at business schools around the world: how to encourage more women to attend their courses.

The issue is being brought to a head by research showing that, while women tend to remain in a minority in the MBA programmes at leading business schools, they are almost on even terms with men at law and medical schools.

One of the reasons is the perception that there is more room for flexible careers in law and medicine than business. But it is also suggested that students typically go to business school later than they would to law or medical school, and the decision to make a move that typically costs tens of thousands of pounds in tuition fees and lost earnings often coincides with the time that many women are thinking of starting families.

The lower cost, reduced risk and greater flexibility are among the reasons that many women take a part-time route to an MBA. At Cranfield, for example, women make up 30 per cent of the part-time students, compared with 20 per cent on the full-time course.

Many would not be surprised by the small numbers of women on MBA courses. After all, while women make up about a third of managerial positions, they are largely confined to the lower ranks – just 4 per cent of executive directors and 1 per cent of the chairs of UK-listed companies are women.

However, there are signs that business schools are not content to hide behind the argument that the number of female business school students just reflects the number of women in business. This is partly a response to pressure for change in the way that public companies are run. The recent review of corporate governance by former City banker Derek Higgs has called for a widening of the group from which non-executive directors are drawn.

At Leeds University Business School, the male:female ratio has declined from 80:20 in 1998 to 52:48 last year – the result of an attempt to increase the proportion of female students initiated by John Hillard. Then the school's director of MBA programmes and now director of all postgraduate courses, he says such a shift in the gender balance has changed the atmosphere and dynamics of the MBA group for the better. "A balanced cohort results in more collaboration and co-operation, with everyone getting more out of the programme."

One way of attracting more female students has been the setting up of scholarships specifically aimed at women. Similar approaches have been taken at LBS and Cranfield, though the latter recently dropped them as women did not necessarily like being singled out in this way.

In this as in other fields, schools are reluctant to take the positive discrimination route, but schools are also going to a lot of trouble to market themselves to women, both in the UK and overseas, including in countries where there might not be a tradition of women going into business.

But, of course, even at a time when many MBA students, especially women, are using the experience and learning to set up their own businesses rather than seek powerful positions in corporations, one of the greatest spurs is having successful role models. As David Simpson, senior marketing admissions manager for the full-time MBA at London Business School, says: "Having a female dean helps". And when she is as prominent as Laura D'Andrea Tyson, national economic adviser in the Clinton Administration, the assistance must be considerable.