By Nathaniel Luce
Pictured: Dean Eric Johnson visited the White House on August 5 to commit Vanderbilt to a new set of best practices to expand opportunities for women in business (Vanderbilt University).
Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management was one of 45 top business schools that visited the White House on Aug. 5 to announce that it was committing to a new set of best practices for helping women succeed in business school and throughout their careers.
Women now make up nearly half of the American workforce and are a substantial majority of college graduates. Today’s households involve a more even split of home and work responsibilities than ever before. Yet the U.S. labor market has not fully adapted to these changes. The new set of best practices offer concrete strategies for business schools to help women succeed throughout school and their careers, and to build a business school experience that prepares students for the workforce of tomorrow.
Vanderbilt collaborated with other business schools to develop the set of best practices. A team from the Owen School, led by Associate Dean Nancy Hyer, prepared a document that described what Owen was doing and would do in the coming year to advance women in business. Dean Eric Johnson attended the White House meeting and committed Vanderbilt to the new best practices document.
“I’m very proud of the hard work and thoughtfulness from our team at Vanderbilt that has been incorporated into this document, which will help change the business school culture to be more inclusive,” Johnson said. “At the Owen School, we’ve invested heavily in our commitment to diversity, but there’s still a lot of work to be done. For example, we recently became a member of the Forté Foundation and are actively working together to develop more opportunities for women business students. We have a genuine desire to help each member of our community succeed, and these best practices will help guide our commitment to building a new and more diverse kind of business leader.”
The Council on Women and Girls and the Council of Economic Advisers hosted the August 5 meeting at the White House.
The best practices, which grew out of discussions in recent years among business school deans, including Dean Johnson, focus on four key areas:
- Ensuring access to business schools and business careers
- Building a business school experience that prepares students for the workforce of tomorrow
- Ensuring career services that go beyond the needs of traditional students
- Exemplifying how organizations should be run
The entire best practices document and attesting schools can be viewed here.
Studies show that, from a young age, girls internalize messages that they don’t have the skills to succeed in business or that business isn’t for them, according to a White House blog about the initiative. By the time they reach college, women are about 30 percent less likely than male undergraduates to major in business. These gaps continue to grow as men and women move into graduate education. Enrollment in MBA programs is sharply skewed towards men: Only 38 percent of students in full-time MBA programs are female. Among general business faculty, only 14 percent of full professors are women, while 42 percent of instructors are female.
A study of salaries of MBA graduates from a top business school found that though men and women had fairly similar earnings at graduation, after only 5 years, men earned approximately 30 percent more than women. After 10 or more years, this gap stretched to 60 percent. Differences in the likelihood and length of career interruptions, including for parental leave, may be responsible.
Vanderbilt Owen Graduate School of Management has invested heavily in initiatives that help women access and succeed in its various programs. The combined 2017 incoming class for the Vanderbilt Executive MBA and Americas MBA programs is 37 percent female, continuing an upward trend that began with the 2011 graduating classes. For years, the Executive MBA program was just 10 percent female, until Vanderbilt changed program structure to make it more attractive for working women.
“We’ve made our programs more female friendly, with a Saturday-only class format so that our students don’t have to take a day off from work,” said Juli Bennett, the executive director of the Executive MBA and Americas MBA programs.
Another initiative to help women access and succeed in business at Vanderbilt was the recent partnering with the Forté Foundation, which is a nonprofit partnership of companies and top business schools working together to launch women into fulfilling, significant careers, and to help address the lower numbers of women who traditionally attend schools of business compared to schools of medicine or law. With the new partnership, Vanderbilt is now able to award more scholarships to increase the number of women pursuing MBAs at the school.
For more information on how Vanderbilt is creating opportunities for women from early career starters to seasoned executives to make an impact in their fields, visit our Women at Owen page.
Contact Person: Brett Israel Media Relations Contact, Vanderbilt University
Contact Phone: (615) 322-3269
Contact Email: brett.israel@vanderbilt.edu
