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Writing Women into Business School Case Studies

The Starting Point

The push for more women in business and in leadership positions is ever present. Business schools play a vital role in achieving gender diversity in leadership and on boards. However, if you take a walk around most business school campuses, what you will see is a majority male student cohort, few female students, few female professors and few women protagonists in the MBA/EMBA course material. This bothered me⎯a lot.

Idea in Brief

The main teaching tool at business schools is the case method approach, lauded as a way of enabling students to learn to lead and connect theory with real-life experiences. For this study, 74 award-winning and bestselling case studies from 2009-2015 were analyzed on how they represent women. Findings show that:

There is a systemic lack of female lead protagonists and an overall absence of women in case studies.
Case studies portray a “male” model of leadership and perpetrate second-generation gender bias.
The lack of women in case studies, as professors or on boards, together with a largely male student cohort at business schools, reinforce the status quo and undermine female managers’ ability to establish their own leadership identity.

Idea in Practice

Business schools should play a vital role in promoting gender equality in organizational leadership and on executive boards. Although they profess to promote gender balance in organizations, in some ways business schools 68 preserve the status quo. The reality is in the numbers: female professors are few, case protagonists are overwhelmingly men, and in the student body men are almost always in a strong majority. This suggests that stereotypical “male” leadership qualities are reinforced by business schools. The implicit message – for both female and male MBA students – is that to succeed they must conform to the masculine “norm.” For women MBA students, who obviously have much to contribute as future executives, not only are they in the minority, but they are virtually invisible in most of the teaching materials and models of leadership presented.

Clearly, business schools need to analyze and understand the explicit and implicit gender messages that all parts of the organization and its programs convey, and what role they play in maintaining the status quo. Current MBA case studies, by their very nature, impede debate about the roles of both women and men in organizations—one would think these are important issues for business schools.

Introduction

Business schools around the world use the case method approach as a tool for learning on MBA and executive education programs. The case method is heralded as a way of enabling students to learn to lead and to connect theory and practice through discussing real-life leadership and organization challenges.1 In this study, I analyzed award-winning case papers written or published from 2009 to 2015 from the Case Centre. I was curious to see how many times a women occupied the role of lead protagonist, and how often women were mentioned across all case studies.

My findings are disturbing. In the overwhelming majority of case studies, the “think manager – think male” scenario prevails: most cases have a male lead—and a white Western one at that.2 When women are present in case papers, they are often cast in secondary roles.

However, I am pleased to report that my theme is garnering attention. On August 5th 2015, the White House convened the Business Community on Expanding Opportunities for Women in Business. In conjunction with this event, 45 business schools committed to a best practice document3 that gives concrete examples of ways to help women succeed in these schools. Among other recommendations, the document mentions that case studies need to be more representative of today’s workplace, “showing women in significant line management roles and/or as the main protagonist.”

Leadership identity development in business schools

Leadership development is promoted as one of the key reasons for attending business school programs. Indeed business schools are uniquely placed to challenge individuals on the way they work, and to model leadership styles in a way that challenges stereotypes. The MBA context - taking time away from the familiar environment and normal constraints of life - offers the possibility to practice and experiment with new ways of “doing” and “being” as a leader. As such, business schools are becoming “identity workspaces” where people reflect on their career development or professional transition. In theory, this is an ideal setting in which to address leadership stereotypes. Indeed MBA program designers are becoming more vocal, and more careful, about diversity. And yet very few people - students, faculty, or administrators - have ever questioned the lack of women in the most entrenched and formalized pedagogical tool of the business school classroom: the case study.

METHOD

The study analyzed 74 award-winning and best-selling studies published over a period of seven years by the Case Centre (CC). Written by faculty and research assistants, the case studies are by far the most widely taught cases in business schools around the world. My research focused on how these award-winning case studies represent women. Attention was given to the gender of the lead protagonist as well as how women were described, and the roles they played. A thematic analysis approach was used to identify overt and covert messages about women leaders, as well as reoccurring themes across the cases. Incidentally, I encountered some resistance as I explained the research. The topic was met by apathy—in the form of comments such as, “Yes, we are aware that there are not many women in case studies,” followed by explanations why that was so, and why nothing could, or should, be done about it. When I interviewed students, many of them, particularly male students, were antagonistic. My graduation speech on the topic was received neutrally ⎯ to put it mildly ⎯ by the associate dean. It was if I had uncovered something like an unpleasant smell that people preferred to live with rather than deal with.

Key Findings and Discussion

A deeper analysis of the 74 cases revealed three common themes: (1) Few women in case studies, (2) Think manager/think male leadership attributes, and (3) ‘Pink’ (traditionally associated with women) areas of work.

There are few women in case studies

Among the 74 case studies, women were absent from 33 (45%). Women featured as protagonists in only eight case studies. Even more startling: two of those eight female protagonists turned out to be men in real life. (One case author who felt there weren’t enough cases featuring women, had intentionally changed the name/sex of the protagonist). Taking this into consideration, only METHOD The study analyzed 74 award-winning and best-selling studies published over a period of seven years by the Case Centre (CC). Written by faculty and research assistants, the case studies are by far the most widely taught cases in business schools around the world. My research focused on how these award-winning case studies represent women. Attention was given to the gender of the lead protagonist as well as how women were described, and the roles they played. A thematic analysis approach was used to identify overt and covert messages about women leaders, as well as reoccurring themes across the cases. Incidentally, I encountered some resistance as I explained the research. The topic was met by apathy—in the form of comments such as, “Yes, we are aware that there are not many women in case studies,” followed by explanations why that was so, and why nothing could, or should, be done about it. When I interviewed students, many of them, particularly male students, were antagonistic. My graduation speech on the topic was received neutrally ⎯ to put it mildly ⎯ by the associate dean. It was if I had uncovered something like an unpleasant smell that people preferred to live with rather than deal with. six of the 74 award-winning and best-selling cases describe the leadership of a female protagonist—about 8%.

Present in cases

There is clearly a systemic lack of female lead protagonists and an overall absence of women in case studies, confirming how primary teaching materials that are in widespread use in business schools are maintaining the gender bias status quo. Neither MBA students nor business school faculty write women into leadership—literally.

Influenced by the famous Bechdel Test that looks at the presence of female leads in movies, I subjected the cases to the “Symons Test” to determine the active presence of women in each paper: each study must include (1) at least one woman, (2) in a leadership position (the protagonist), (3) who talks to another woman about the business.

Of the 74 papers, 16 passed the first measure and ten papers passed the first and second. Only three case studies (4%) met all three criteria—and in two of these, the women protagonists were originally men. The overwhelming majority, 45 cases (61%), did not meet any of the Symons Test measurements, providing incontrovertible evidence of the invisibility of women in business case studies.

Men’s dominant presence in papers reinforce the “think manager – think male” model

The majority of case studies feature more than one man. There are few women in cases that have a male protagonist. Leadership descriptions in all case studies substantiate the “think manager – think male” standpoint, for example “He liked fast motorbikes and thrash metal” and “A tough but fair manager—he was results-driven, disciplined, and demanded complete accountability from his team.” Other men were described as strong-willed and courageous.

Moreover, in four of the eight cases with a female protagonist, the supporting cast of male characters was given more space than the women leader. In five of the eight cases the female protagonist’s qualities were not described, although the case went on to describe the male leaders. In cases with male protagonists, qualities and characteristics were described. Second-generation gender bias was apparent in the cases. The papers implicitly indicated that even when present, women were somehow “less”.

What are the implications for the business school context? With so few female protagonists and women featured in case studies, added to a scarcity of female professors, predominantly male student cohorts and a “think management – think male” paradigm, there are a number of messages that all students, male and female, are subject to.

Because the business school climate and culture is predominantly male, gender stereotypes are reinforced for women students (who are in a small minority). As women are “invisible” or missing from this context, female management students may unconsciously feel that they don’t they belong: This is not the right place for me (as a woman).

Another implicit message they may be getting is the need to assume stereotypical male leadership qualities in order to become “invisible” by conforming to the “norm”. Within the program and the business school environment, the way leaders are portrayed in business cases continues to encourage female management students to take on “male stereotypes of leadership”.

Being in the minority at business schools, women (including faculty) also become highly “visible” and are more vulnerable to criticism. This undermines female students’ motivation to experiment with leadership roles during their MBA experience and thus adds to their role identity conflict, the implication being that business schools and MBA courses may not provide “safe identity workspaces” for women.

These findings do not point an accusatory finger at men; indeed they suggest that men too are prisoners of a system that is detrimental to both genders. Messages that reinforce ideal or desirable “male” role models and leadership qualities undermine the ability of both men and women to accord leadership status to women. They also hamper men who display so-called “feminine” leadership behaviors. In addition, by reinforcing a norm, these messages dampen debate and critical challenges about the way business schools (individuals, professional bodies and organizations) theorize about and teach leadership.

Women are associated with ‘pink’ areas of work in case studies

‘Pink’ topics are those that are traditionally associated with women, such as:

what was once known as “the four Fs”: food, family (relationships, children, sex), furniture (home), fashion
female-focused subject matter, such as women’s health or culture

I found that women were predominantly present in pink topics in the case studies analyzed. In six of the eight cases that had a female protagonist, the industries could be clearly categorized as pink (family and/or woman-specific, fashion and/or woman-specific, food and furniture), whereas in case studies with a male protagonist the main topics were technology (internet, mobile and IT initiatives, etc.) 29%; food 20%; motor industry and transport 15%; family (health, retail and entertainment) 15%. Including a female protagonist in cases featuring companies within pink categories reflects an unconscious bias that these are the areas in which women are “normally” found and that they are not present in other areas of business.

Practical Implications

The environment for women at business schools is predominantly masculine. By overlooking issues of gender and leadership in case studies, business schools enact gender biases and continue to maintain women’s invisibility, and thus perpetuate the status quo. This also reduces the critical and challenging debates that are so important to the learning environment and omits consideration of the value of both women’s and men’s leadership styles.

Business schools need to oversee the entire case collections used in their business programs and the gender messages they transmit⎯both via their courses and as institutions. If their genuine intention is to help women shatter the glass ceiling and build awareness of gender issues, there is still much to do. From top leadership down, business schools need to understand the explicit and implicit messages about gender and leadership that all parts of the organization send out to students, and what role the institution plays in maintaining the status quo.

The representation of women in senior positions is critical for the development of a woman’s leadership identity. At business schools it includes role models among faculty and other senior positions, as well as increased student numbers. Without role models and other women in business, female management students may be affected at an early stage of their career by an unconscious bias that they “do not belong here.”

Access the full publication here

Business Schools Should be Leading the Way in Tackling Gender Gaps

By Lesley Symons & Donna Keegan • March 31, 2020

To transform gendered business environments, women need to be adequately featured in business school teaching material. When I started my master’s at INSEAD business school in 2013 I immediately noticed that women were underrepresented from the student body through to professorial level. I realised this underrepresentation went as far as the teaching material we were working with – none of the business case studies featured women. So, for my master’s thesis topic I decided to research this issue – the first ever study of this kind. My findings revealed the extent to which women were excluded from these crucial course materials. Written by business school faculties, case papers are used to provide MBA students with an insight into real-world business problems and put them in the role of the decision-maker. The case study method is a style of learning that accounts for as much as a third of teaching among today’s top business schools. My research covered 105 different papers between 2009 and 2018 from the Case Centre, an authority in case paper teaching. Here are some of the key findings: More women in papers over time but not always in business roles Between 2009 and 2013, women featured in 55 per cent of cases, which inspired the name of my research Invisible Selves: Writing women into business school case papers. In these cases, women tended to be in subordinate roles or from examples of marginalised communities. Since 2016 women are found in 90 per cent of cases. However, although 67 per cent of the 105 papers had women in them, in 23 or 22 per cent of these papers women could either be missed by the reader or the women were in a non-business-related role (e.g. the wife of a character). We judged that women are present in a prominent or business-focussed role in only 47 or 45 per cent of papers. Women are also not found at all in a third of papers. We started researching the number of characters across a total of 52 papers between 2015 and 2019 and found that there were 89 female characters – an average of just under two women per paper. Despite disappointing findings, there is a move by schools to add more women characters into papers. Few female leaders and nothing is changing The research shows that despite the increasing number of female characters, the same cannot be said about the number of female leaders. Of the 105 papers only 12 featured a female protagonist. And this figure has not improved over time. I adapted the Bechdel test to use on case studies and called it the “Symons Test”. In order to pass this test, a case paper had to: 1) have a woman in it, who, was 2) in a leadership position (the protagonist in the research) and 3) who spoke to another woman about the business. Over the 10 years, only four papers out of 105 have a women leader speaking to another women about the business, an abysmal four per cent. It is imperative going forward that case papers not only have more women characters but crucially more women leaders, so that female and male business students view women as leaders in business. Leadership descriptors with stereotypically male attributes Men are present in 103 of the 105 papers. 83 of these papers have a male protagonist. In the five years we have been counting characters there are 450 male characters across 52 papers; an average of just under nine characters per paper. Along with the lack of female leaders, the papers also represented leadership using attributes that are stereotypically assigned to men. Virginia Schein conducted seminal research in the 1970s into the way traditionally “male” qualities are associated with leadership, coining the phrase “think manager, think male”. My thesis, taking this into account, found that male protagonists were described using the following kinds of characteristics in case studies: “tough, assertive, results-driven, strong-willed, courageous, energetic and able to see the big picture”. Even in cases where there were female leaders, their male counterparts were described in more detail. This suggested that the correct leadership style being put forward by the papers is one with male attributes. This lack of diverse descriptors stifles discussions about different approaches to leadership and promotes a one-size-fits-all traditionally masculine style. So what does this research tell us about business schools that are purporting to teach us how to lead? Business schools are supposed to prepare students for the modern business world, but their teaching material is outdated and promotes skewed representations of gender. How can we change work environments loaded with unconscious gender bias when the very places in which we learn about business are themselves steeped in such stereotypical bias? A start would be to add more women leaders and characters into case papers. At the same time business schools need to analyse and understand, from the top down, the explicit and implicit messages about gender and leadership that all parts of their organisations and programmes convey to students. Business schools need to recognise the role their institutions play in maintaining this status quo and address how they can change these messages. With relatively few women leading in business, the need for change is urgent. Business schools should be leading by example when it comes to encouraging women in leadership, showing students and the companies that they will eventually work for that they are ahead of the curve and are committed to developing leaders of the future. Access the original article here

What's Good for the Goose Is Good for the Gander?

By Lesley Symons & Debapratim Purkayastha • November 30, 2017

This case explores the issues of gender in the workplace, and the deep structures of power that marginalize, oppress, and silence individuals and groups. It helps explore the dark side of the stereotypes, biases, and beliefs in the workplace about women and leadership. The case discusses aspects of the sudden and surprise firing in 2014 of Jill Abramson (Abramson), the first woman executive editor of The New York Times (NYT) in its 160-year-old history. In May 2014, the publisher of the company, Arthur Sulzberger Jr, suddenly announced the unceremonious exit of Abramson without giving any reasons, and thereby attracted a lot of media attention. The abrupt firing raised questions on gender disparity, discrimination in salaries and incentives, sexism, and even non-acceptance of a disapproving look when it came from a woman. The behavior of Abramson, who was known to be aggressive in her communications with her team, her looks, and management style were all called into question; she was even described as having a 'bitchy resting face' and a voice that sounded like a nasal car honk. Abramson did not share a great relationship with the publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, president and CEO Mark Thompson, and her direct report Dean Baquet, who eventually succeeded her. The issue also reignited the debate on whether women in the workforce, even those in high positions, got a raw deal compared to their male counterparts. There were several questions being debated such as: What should female employees do if they are a victim of gender pay inequity? Are female executives disliked, and even fired, for behaving too much like male managers? Purchase the full case paper here

Why Gender Inequality in Business School Case Studies Matters

By Tim Dhoul, Top MBA • August 16, 2016

The case study method is a style of learning that accounts for as much as a third of teaching among today’s top business schools. Written by business school faculty, case studies (or business cases ) provide MBA students with an insight into real-world business problems and put them in the role of the decision-maker. Vital teaching tools Vicky Lester is the deputy director at The Case Centre , an independent not-for-profit organization promoting use of the case study method in business education around the world. She says the method’s key strength as teaching tools comes in getting students engaged and increasing their confidence. The Case Centre also acts as a digital library of business cases for schools, faculty and students, housing approximately 50,000 business cases from the last 40 years. “It’s a safe environment for them where they can put themselves into the position of the protagonist within the case study and make decisions based on the information given,” Lester says, noting how eagerness to adopt the method among business schools in emerging markets is seeing its influence grow on the international stage. Considering the method’s significance, one might expect these teaching tools to provide a fair reflection of the real business world and perhaps even to positively enforce the idea that women in business have been underrepresented for too long. So, the recent revelation at Harvard Business School (which contributes roughly 80% of the world’s supply of business cases) that only about 9% of its case studies currently focus on a female leader (or protagonist) comes as quite a shock. Harvard Business School’s promise on business cases The revelation from Harvard also came with a promise to act on this gender inequality and double the school’s number of female protagonists in its case studies to 20% over the next five years. While recognition of the problem and a commitment to improve is commendable, that’s aspiring to just 20% when MBA classes are commonly made up of student bodies that are over 30% female. Wharton MBA alumna and writer, Phyllis Zimbler Miller, was suitably unimpressed, writing in her blog ; “how magnanimous of the Harvard Business School dean to state that the future case studies would have 20% of women ‘protagonists’...Why not 50%?” INSEAD graduate, Lesley Symons has been exploring this conundrum. Indeed, her thesis - written as part of her Master’s in Consulting and Coaching for Change – serves as a damning indictment of gender inequality in business case studies. Symons, who traded a management career with multi-national corporations for coaching ten years ago, became interested in the topic after noticing a disproportionate number of female faculty, as well as presence in teaching tools, on an INSEAD program that was almost an equal split between men and women. “I thought, well, if we’re trying to get women into leadership and onto boards doesn’t a business school need to have a role in this?” she recalls. A Catalyst report at the end of 2013 certainly highlighted the need to do more by revealing little improvement in female representation among the Fortune 500’s top earners over the past five years. Only 16.9% of corporate board seats at these companies were held by women in 2013. The results of Symons’ thesis, ‘Where are the women leaders?’, confirms that the number of cases prominently featuring women in leadership positions is currently lower even than this – and considerably lower than the number of female students commonly found on MBA courses. INSEAD graduate highlights extent of problem The INSEAD graduate’s data came from a study of award-winning business school cases from 2009-2013, as well as The Case Centre's top 3 best-sellers in each of those years. Across the five years and 53 different case studies, Symons found that women in leadership positions made no more than a minimal appearance in 73% of them and featured as a protagonist just seven times - or in 12.5% of the business cases analyzed. Plus, on realizing that three of the award-winning cases featuring a female protagonist were written by the same author, Harvard Business School professor Christopher Bartlett, Symons got in touch only for Bartlett to confess that he had simply changed two male characters to female because he was aware that Harvard’s teaching tools lacked sufficient female role models. “That has a knock-down effect for women, and for men, in learning about leadership,” Symons says, explaining that it doesn’t give women sufficient female role models to encourage them to believe there’s any way to reach leadership positions, other than by subconsciously adopting male leadership attributes. “If you’re on an MBA program and you’re in a low minority and there are no women in the papers or in the teaching, you’re actually highly visible because you’re highly different. So, what that often means is that women try to become invisible by taking on similar traits as men,” Symons expands, adding that, “For men, it reiterates, or re-embeds, that leadership is male.” Unfortunately, women in leadership positions who display ‘male-like’ leadership attributes have been known to become decidedly unpopular. This is an underlying reason why Sheryl Sandberg, Facebook COO and author of Lean In, created the campaign to Ban Bossy . Are business schools failing women in leadership? Business schools should be leading by example when it comes to encouraging women in leadership and preparing them to join the next generation of senior managers. However, in this, it seems they still have a lot of ground to make up. “What business schools need to be doing is a little bit of what organizations are doing. Big organizations are having a debate around what gender means for them and their leadership. I think business schools have started to look at gender in the classroom because it’s a bit of a hot topic, but I’m not sure they’re looking at themselves, and at the whole institution.” It’s underwhelming to hear that business schools could learn a thing or two from corporate culture when many would argue that it’s supposed to be the other way round – that business schools could and should be challenging and informing corporate culture. As Symons surmises, “if they profess to be teaching about leading or cutting edge theory then why aren’t they doing this as well?” Systematic changes needed in case studies’ production She believes the problem afflicting business cases may stem from the current system whereby the gender of characters portrayed is not tracked along their way to publication, meaning that you only really know how many women in leadership positions feature by reading the finished article. “My understanding is when people hand in a new case paper there isn’t any coding on whether it’s got a male or female protagonist, so part of the problem is changing that,” she says indicating that this difficulty might explain why Harvard Business School has its sights set seemingly low. In a situation where case studies are the intellectual property of the professor, rather than the school, looking at an entire MBA program’s teaching tools would be the best place to start to redress the balance, something Symons isn’t convinced has been done before. Working with The Case Centre and business schools to increase awareness Symons hasn’t finished looking into the extent of gender inequality in business school cases now that she’s graduated from INSEAD. She wants to go further and look at The Case Centre’s 40 best-selling business cases collated in the 40 years since its inception, as well as to try and find a way to explore a school’s entire catalogue of cases used so that she can see the range available to students on a specific MBA program. She’s already had a conversation with Harvard and is hopeful that she can add a bit of perspective to their attempts to look at the problem of gender inequality in their case studies. “What I’ve said to them is it’s not just about the women protagonists, it’s how many women are in the papers and how they’re described,” she says, having constructed a system in her own work that judges the level of participation from female leaders, taking inspiration from The Bechdel Test often applied to movies. What drives Symons to go further in her research is being able to help both women and men reassess the way they look at leadership identities and how teaching tools, such as case studies, can have a strong impact on how people view women in leadership. Education is the first step, she says, and opening the debate is reward enough. What remains to be seen is how far business schools are prepared to go to change the troubling gender inequality in business case studies used in the world’s leading MBA programs – now that it has finally come to light. Find the original article here .

Only 11% of Top Business School Case Studies Have a Female Protagonist

By Lesley Symons, Harvard Business Review • March 9, 2016

Last August the White House hosted an event with a lengthy title: “ Business School Deans and the Business Community on Expanding Opportunities for Women in Business .” As part of the summit, 45 business schools committed to a best practice document that offers concrete examples to help women succeed at their institutions. Among the recommendations is to make case studies, a dominant teaching method at some schools, more representative of today’s modern workplace: [S]howing diversity in leaders solving a wide range of problems is important to illustrate the wide range of diversity in the business community. This includes showing women and minorities in more significant line management roles and/or as the main protagonist in the case. Our research shows that the cases widely used by business schools today do not represent this sentiment — far from it. During the seven-year period from 2009–2015, we find that while women are included in 41 of 74 award-winning and best-selling cases, men are in a full 73. Men are the protagonist in 62 ; women are the protagonist in just eight. (A remaining four cases are without a clear protagonist.) When you view this through the lens of what we refer to as the “Symons Test” — a take on the famous Bechdel Test , which measures how women are depicted in movies — the gender gap looks even worse: Before recommending ways to remedy this gap, a little background on how we came up with these numbers. In 2014, we published an analysis of 53 award-winning and best-selling cases between 2009 and 2013, based on data from The Case Centre . The Case Centre is one of the main distributors of case studies, articles, and books on behalf of business schools. We recently added 21 more cases from the 2015 and 2016 Case Centre awards to the list. These awards went to outstanding cases published in 2014 and 2015 that have been used across the largest number of establishments globally over the past two years. Each year, one case in each of nine management categories is recognized, as is one overall winner. We also added one case from the top three best-selling cases to the list because the most popular are already represented in our analysis from past years. Disappointingly but perhaps not surprisingly, only a single paper among the 21 new award-winning case papers of the past two years features a female protagonist. Only 12 of the 21 papers has a woman in it at all, and only seven papers have a woman “present” — in other words, she plays a noteworthy role within the account and cannot be easily missed. In total, out of 222 characters featured across the 21 papers, only 21 are women. There is, however, a small silver lining: the single female protagonist that is found among these 21 papers is employed as an analyst for a petroleum industry, not an industry usually associated with women. Our older research has typically shown that women are associated with traditionally “pink topics” such as food, family, furniture, and fashion, as well as gender-specific subjects such as women’s health issues. While our analysis doesn’t take into account the full range of cases taught in business schools, it does indicate that those most commonly used don’t go a long way in advancing the White House goals that business schools have signed on to. So what needs to change? And who should play a role? Here are three possibilities: Clearing houses should publicize and reward cases with diverse characters. If you can measure it, you can start to change it. Data in this area is crucial. Case clearing houses, such as the Case Centre or Harvard, can assist by actively bringing the topic into the open. They could start by tracking the gender — and ethnicity — of the protagonist and making this information visible on their websites. In addition to knowing how many cases are written with a female lead, clearing houses should also give awards for women-led cases. Many have already had awards for best-selling cases, case by topic, field of education, etc., and the recipients of these are sometimes given an elevated status by the clearing houses in their online libraries. Clearing houses could also sponsor new female-led cases and promote those with female protagonists. Business school professors can speak to the issue directly. Aside from being careful about how cases are chosen, professors can be transparent about each case by simply noting the gender of the protagonist, the industries that women protagonists are found in, and how women are represented. (Do they talk to other women about business, for example, or are they merely a customer?) That said, we believe there’s an underlying issue that’s harder to remedy: Professors often use their own cases to teach — and the majority of professors at business schools are men and write about other men. Best-selling and award-winning cases are reused and reused, creating a legacy system of male protagonists. Encouraging professors to write papers with women in them is part of the systemic change we need. Cases need to serve the audience they are teaching, which is one that includes women. Business schools need to show their students (and the companies these students will eventually work for) that they are ahead of the curve and are committed to the leaders of the future. Harvard, for one, has pledged to double the number of women in case studies by 2019 . Companies should weigh in too. Today’s businesses, many of which are looking to address gender balance on their staffs, need to start asking questions. What kind of schools are their students studying at, and is gender equality being taught or acknowledged? Do they know — or want to know — what business examples their future employees are studying? And do they want potential employees to be comfortable with and versed in women as senior executives? If the White House summit is any indication, the topic of gender and business schools is in the zeitgeist right now. Awareness and change is beginning to happen. However, as this data shows, the need for case papers to be more gender inclusive is woefully behind the times. Women and men who are poised to lead the companies of the future are still not reading about women as business leaders, to their own detriment. Access the original article here

More female MBAs but still a long way to go

By Lesley Symons, Poets & Quants • February 17, 2016

Abstract Business schools are doing a better job of recruiting and enrolling more female MBA students, but they have a long way to go. That’s one unmistakable conclusion from the latest gender-specific data published by The Financial Times in its recently published Global MBA ranking. Among the top 100-ranked schools, 19 now have female student numbers over 40%. This figure has almost doubled from just 10 schools last year; 31 schools have female faculty rates above 30%, which is an increase of eight schools from last year. Access the original article here

How Women Are Faring at Business Schools Worldwide

By Lesley Symons & Avivah Wittenberg-Cox, Harvard Business Review • April 27, 2015

You might expect organizations that teach the latest in leadership theory to practice what they preach. It ain’t happening. There is a raft of research showing that improving gender balance leads to enhanced business performance. But business schools, which serve as talent pools for companies that are working on their own gender balance, seem stuck in yesterday’s statistics. Women make up 60% of university graduates, but that number falls precipitously at business schools. Female faculty are in even shorter supply. Our Gender Balance Scorecard on Business Schools , the first scorecard we’ve done for B-schools , gives an overview of the top 100 schools (Financial Times ranking, 2015). It also takes an in-depth look at the top 12 business schools and how they have evolved since 2010. Based on research by one of us (Lesley), it focuses on the gender balance achieved at two levels: among MBA students and among faculty. Key findings: Better MBA balance : Most of the Top 100 business schools show some improvement in the gender balance of the MBA student body since 2010. Static faculty balance : Gender balance on the faculty side, however, seems more challenging. Most balanced : Star performing schools with female student numbers over 40% and female faculty numbers over 30% include the University of Hong Kong, Imperial College, Lancaster, Bath, Queens, Birmingham, and Fudan business schools. Two have a female Dean. None are in the FT’s “Top 12 tier” of schools. Some of the best are most balanced in MBAs… : Four of the top 12 schools now have student participation at 40% and above: Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and University of California at Berkeley. …and least balanced in faculty : Only one school in the top 12 has female faculty numbers above 30% (IE Business School) and fully one-third of them have lower than 20%: INSEAD, Columbia Business School, University of Chicago Booth, and CEIBS. MBA programs attract the future leaders of the world’s largest companies—of the 500 largest public companies worldwide, 31% are led by an MBA graduate. Over the past decade, significant efforts have been made to gender balance the world’s best MBA programs. Depending on where you look, those efforts have been more or less successful. We’ve observed that having an MBA gives neither men nor women the skills they need to build and lead gender-balanced teams. No wonder. As Lesley has shown in her research on business school case studies , the learning tools used in MBA programs feature case studies dominated by men. The faculty are mostly men (tenured faculty even more so). And executive programs are even more male-dominated than MBA classes. If you add all this up, neither women nor men are getting much experience of gender balance at the world’s top business schools. Business schools could play a crucial role in educating both men and women about gender-balanced companies and leadership. They are an ideal place to develop talent that is twenty-first-century-ready—i.e., that is both meritocratic and “gender bilingual.” How seriously have these schools embedded this culture change themselves? Have they created balanced learning environments? And how attractive are their rather masculine cultures to today’s more female-dominated pools of college graduates? 36.4% of MBA degrees awarded in the U.S. in 2012–2013 were awarded to women . The balance improves slightly outside the U.S. (38.1%). But the number of students earning MBA degrees is actually declining across the globe, and that should alert business schools that they need to urgently adapt to the needs and expectations of today’s talent. The first phase of this transformation seems fragilely underway, with schools recognizing the need to attract more female students. But Phase 2, creating balanced organizations and addressing the cultures and styles that dominate in most leading schools, has hardly begun. Even schools that have managed to improve their faculty balance discover that the balance is limited to certain disciplines , like organizational behavior. Is this really serving the companies, most of whom are trying to improve their gender balance, that are the key customers of these schools? As Harvard has courageously confessed , even when gender ratios improve, cultures don’t automatically become more gender bilingual. There is still a lot of work to be done in this area, and it will take leadership. It’s time for business schools to deliver on their purpose—access to the world’s best talent. All the talent. Access the original article here

5 ways Business Schools can help shatter the glass ceiling

By Lesley Symons, Women's Agenda • March 24, 2015

I was incensed when discovering the gender gap lurking in my business school. It wasn’t evident in my class room – in this – unusually – there was a healthy balance of men and women. Instead, I noticed gender inequality hiding among the school’s business case studies. Business schools use these core educational tools to teach students how to lead and connect theory with real-life experience. Schools also tout case studies as the most effective way to provide lessons in leadership. Yet, incredibly, most of the case studies feature male leaders. Women are a glaring omission. In my thesis, ‘ Where are the women leaders? ’, I analysed The Case Centre’s award-winning case studies and the top three best-selling cases each year between 2009 and 2013. My research shows women as the protagonists in just seven of the 53 different case studies. Of those seven, two are actually men. A case writer changed the names of two protagonists in an attempt to inject more women into case studies. In comparison, men are featured as the protagonist in an overwhelming 45 of the 53 different case studies. It’s incredibly disappointing that women are invisible in today’s business schools. There are few female professors and board members, and the lack of female protagonists in case studies has a major impact on how people, both men and women, view women in leadership. It’s time business schools played a pivotal role in empowering women to finally shatter that glass ceiling. Here are five things business schools need to do to be female-friendly. 1. Write case studies with female leaders With women the lead writers of just seven of the 53 different case studies, the inequality is obvious from the onset. In 2013, Harvard Business School revealed only 9% of its case studies feature female protagonists. The school has pledged to increase the number of female protagonists in its case studies to 20% over five years. More business schools should take action to measure the diversity of their case protagonists. It’s imperative that more female leaders are written into case studies. Not only does this allow women to view female role models and other effective leadership styles, it also gives women the ability to see themselves as agents of change. 2. Counter stereotypes Redressing the gender balance involves more than increasing the number of female protagonists. Female leaders across award-winning and best-selling case studies are mostly found in the ‘pink topic’ areas of food, family, furniture and fashion, and gender-specific subjects, such as women’s health issues. This stereotypic representation ignores some of the renowned female leaders making vital inroads in fields such as social media, technology and the internet. More detail about the qualities of female leaders will also assist students to value different types of leadership. 3. Understand the gender gap Business schools must review the issue of gender equality, not just in the classroom but across their whole institution. It’s vital they assess the explicit and implicit messages about gender and leadership in their teaching materials. One way they can rate their case studies is with my Symons Test. The test calls for a case study: (1), to have one woman in it; (2) in a leadership position (the protagonist); (3) who talks to another woman about the business. Engaging professors to answer gender equity questionnaires about the case studies in their programs also works to highlight the imbalance. 4. Lead the way It’s disconcerting that while women have consistently completed 35% of MBA degrees in the US over the past 10 years, women still leave business schools on lower salaries than men. Business schools have an important role to play in enabling young men and women to see both genders as leaders. They are also in a unique position to model new ways of leadership for the corporate sector that challenge traditional management methods. They must champion the cause of gender diversity. The future of women as leaders in our corporate world depends on it. 5. Foster more female leaders Business schools are masculine environments. There are few female role models for business students at a faculty level. In 2013, women formed between 14% and 24% of academic staff at the world’s top MBA programs while women also accounted for as little as 11% of board members at these same programs. Growing the number of female professors and female board members ensures more women will see themselves as leaders. Business schools should consider introducing a gender initiative to review the number of women in senior faculty positions. I urge business schools to take this matter seriously and get on with the business of making changes.

No Women in Business?

By Lesley Symons, We Are The City • November 11, 2014

Key research findings on the lack of women in MBA case studies I decided I needed to study. I wanted to understand the latest theories about how people and organisations work. My career had evolved from general management positions in leading organisations, mainly in the beauty sector, to over the past ten years working as a leadership coach with individuals and corporate teams. The course I wanted to take was offered at a French business school listed as one of the top ten in the world. I was so excited, but my excitement soon turned to amazement—amazement tinged with a little (okay a lot) of frustration. Walking around the campus, I wondered where the other female students were. In the class room – where were the women professors? Although 48% of students in my course were women, it was clear that most other courses did not share this gender balance. After a while, I also noticed the lack of case material that featured women as a leader or manager, or even mentioned women at all. In fact, across my eight modules studied, I read one paper with a woman in it and as the leader she doubted herself instead of exhibiting confidence or strong leadership! Where was I? Why was I being taught the latest in leadership theory and not seeing women anywhere? I had nothing that showed a possible “me” in the course material, in front of the class or on campus. My master’s thesis topic was therefore easy to pick. I decided to research the presence of women across award-winning and bestselling case papers distributed by The Case Centre, one of the leading distributors of business school case papers, from 2009 to 2013. These papers are used widely in business school programmes worldwide and are indicative of what students are reading in their courses. The majority of business schools use case papers as a teaching method in their MBA and other programmes. Among other things, MBA programmes propose to teach students how to lead. I was surprised and shocked by two things: firstly, that this research had not been done before, and secondly, by the outcomes that I found. Three key themes evolved: Invisible women Leadership descriptors with stereotypically male attributes “Pink” areas of work Invisible women I compiled, read and researched 53 different papers across a five-year period, across both categories of The Case Centre’s award-winning and bestselling papers. What I found was that, overwhelmingly, women were not portrayed in leadership positions. In fact, they were hardly represented at all in these studies. Women, leadership and business seemed to be at odds across the papers. Out of the 53 papers, women were the protagonists (the leader) in just seven papers. Of these seven papers, two were originally written with a male protagonist and had the name, and consequently the gender, changed. This meant that only five (or 9%) of the 53 papers were originally written with a female lead. In five of these seven papers, the female protagonist was the only woman present in the paper. Women were mentioned in 29 of the papers, but I deemed women to be present in only 11 of these due to the scarcity of description and attention given to women in the rest. Women were totally absent in 24 (or 48%) of all papers. Of the 53 papers, 52 mentioned at least one man, and in 29 of them, there was a “founding father” mentioned in addition to the male lead. These results led me to devise an adaptation of the Bechdel test for movies to use on case studies, which I called the Symons test. In order to pass this test, a case paper had to have: 1) a woman in it who was 2) in a leadership position(protagonist in the research) and 3) who spoke to another woman about the business. Just three of the 53 papers met the criteria for all three categories. Women were not present in the papers, were not portrayed as leaders and when they were leaders they were alone. Something I was experiencing all too well at the school. Stereotypes of leadership as male Along with the lack of female leaders, the papers also represented leadership using attributes that are stereotypically assigned to men. For example, here are some words used to describe the male protagonists presented in my thesis and taken from the case studies: “passionate, committed, disciplined, results-driven, strong-willed, courageous, energetic and able to see the big picture” (Symons2014- Where are the women leaders? Thesis INSEAD).Even in cases where there were female leaders, their male counterparts were described in more detail. It suggested to me that the correct leadership style is one with male attributes. Women were not present in the papers, were not portrayed as leaders and when they were leaders they were alone. Something I was experiencing all too well at the school. Pink topics The OpEd Project 2012 Byline Report tracks the most influential ideas and individuals in U.S. national and global conversations. OpEd coined the phrase “pink topics” to describe topics that either 1) fall into what was once known as the four Fs: food, family (including relationships, children, and sex), furniture (home) and fashion or 2) women-focused subject matter such as women-specific health or culture. Pink topics are not seen as any less important than other topics; they simply identify areas where female writers are predominantly in print. All of the case papers studied that had woman protagonists fit into these pink topics, such as Dove and Ikea. Contrast that with the leading category for papers with a male protagonist—Information Technologies (IT), in which 31% of papers coming from this sector had all-male leads. Finally, what does this research tell us about business schools that are purporting to teach us how to lead? Do business schools not have a responsibility to teach leadership in all its different forms and open up learning for men and women to different ways of leading? Women and men need to see women in business and as leaders. How can we change work environments loaded with unconscious gender bias when the very places in which we learn about business are, themselves, steeped in such stereotypical bias? A start would be to add more women into their case papers! At the same time business schools need to analyse and understand, from the top down, the explicit and implicit messages about gender and leadership that all parts of their organisations and programmes convey to students. Business schools need to recognize the role their institutions play in maintaining this status quo and address how they can change these messages. At The Case for Women we hope to improve gender balance in these institutions through researching learning materials and tracking women’s overall presence at business schools. So I wonder, have you studied for an MBA or executive programme? Did you notice the lack of women in your papers and as professors? As a woman, were you part of the minority in your course? If there was anything else you noticed on your course about gender, leadership and business, let me know. If you are interested in our research, please contact us on hello@thecaseforwomen.com . Find the original article here .

What the Scarcity of Women in Business Case Studies Really Looks Like

By Lesley Symons and Herminia Ibarra, Harvard Business Review • April 28, 2014

“The school owed you better, and I promise it will be better,” Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria told an alumni audience in January, acknowledging and apologizing for the school’s problematic past concerning gender equity . He then pledged to double the number of business case studies that feature a woman as the protagonist up to a level of 20% over the next five years. Dean Nohria’s promise is noteworthy and important. But what exactly is the magnitude of the case study inequality problem across all business schools? And what will it take to change this aspect of an educational ecosystem that provides (or withholds) role models and sends signals about who does or doesn’t have what it takes to lead? We sought to answer these questions, even though counting how many women case protagonists business school students are exposed to is a daunting task — many cases are written, but few are used by instructors other then the original case writer. There can also be large variation from one semester to another in what cases are used to teach any given class. But one obvious entry point into is the information provided by The Case Centre on award-winning and best-selling cases that are used across thousands of business schools and training programs. Selecting the top three award-winning case studies and the best-selling cases each year for the five-year window between 2009-2013 yielded a total of 53 different case studies — some of the same cases came up as best-sellers several years in a row, and a few were both best-sellers and award-winners. We expected to see few women featured in this elite population, but what we found surprised even us. Across the five years and 53 different case studies, women are simply absent in 45%, or 24 of them. Women feature as a protagonist in only seven case studies. Moreover, two of the seven women protagonists, both of whom are from award-winning cases (on Levendary Cafe and United Cereal ), were actually men; the case author, who felt there weren’t enough cases featuring women, simply changed the name, and therefore the sex of the protagonist. Taking this into consideration, only five of the 53 award-winning and best selling cases actually describe the leadership of an actual women protagonist – about 9%. But counting the number of protagonists is only scratching the surface. We identified four key areas where gender plays a huge role: Women protagonists are mostly found in “pink” industries, organizations, or roles. They are often the only woman in a significant role described in the case study. They are described in less depth and length than important male protagonists described within the same case study. Not a single teaching note for the case studies with women protagonists raised the issue of gender as a point of relevance or discussion. These teaching notes are widely used to guide instructors on how to approach the cases in the classroom. Pink topics. The OpEd Project , which tracks the range of voices and quality of ideas we hear globally, coined the phrase “pink topics” to describe the areas in which women are most frequently visible as opinion leaders. These include the “four Fs”: food; family, furniture, and fashion, as well as gender-specific subjects such as women’s health issues. Of the seven award winning and best-selling cases featuring women protagonists (real or otherwise), six can be classified as concerning “pink topics,” including beauty (Dove), breakfast cereal (United Cereal), dolls (New Heritage Doll Company), rugs (IKEA). The problem with this stereotypic representation, of course, is that it inadvertently indicates that women are not suited for leadership roles in traditionally male sectors like manufacturing, tech, and banking. These are areas where women have actually made important inroads — just look at Sheryl Sandberg at Facebook, Marillyn Hewson at Lockheed Martin, and Virginia M. Rometty at IBM, to name a few. Token women. The famous Bechdel Test “measures” how women are depicted in a movie on the basis of three criteria: Does the film have at least two women who speak to each other about something other than a man? We built on this idea to create a similar test for business case studies (which we call the “Symons Test”), counting how many of the 53 cases had: A woman in a leadership position (the protagonist) who speaks to another women about the business. Only three of the 53 case studies met these three criteria. And in a further three cases, the female protagonist was the only named woman and thus meets 2 of the criteria. (Some case studies mentioned women as the customers or service recipients, but they did not play a role in the action described in the study.) When women are depicted as alone at the top, it reinforces images of isolation and potentially contributes to the stereotype that senior women do not support the advancement of other women into higher leadership positions. Impoverished descriptions. Unlike the rich descriptions of male protagonists in the cases that feature them, the character and qualities of female protagonists tend to be described in much less detail. As well, in cases with a female protagonist where there is also a male founder — in “IKEA’s Global Sourcing Challenge: Indian Rugs and Child Labor (A)” and “Zara: Responsive, High Speed, Affordable Fashion” — the founders’ qualities are described in more depth than those of the woman protagonist. Overall, the male characters in four of the seven woman protagonist case studies are given more space than the female protagonist. In five of the seven case studies featuring a woman protagonist, her qualities are not described at all. In the other two, there is a very short description of the protagonist: one in which the protagonist was originally written as a man, and the other in which the male founder of the company gets more air space than the protagonist. Without rich descriptions of women as leaders, we are left with stereotypically male models of how leaders “walk and talk,” suggesting that there are limited — and gendered — ways to succeed. No guidance on how to discuss gender issues . Forty-six of the 53 case studies were written by men, including the seven with women protagonists. None of the teaching notes for the case studies with women protagonists raised their gender as a potential issue in analyzing the case, which, in at least some courses, would seem to be relevant to the course topic. This is a critical omission, as research shows that similar behavior is interpreted differently when observed in a man or a woman. In one example, a pair of Columbia Business School professors took a Harvard Business School case study about a venture capitalist named Heidi Roizen and changed her name to “Howard” in half of the classes taught . The professors then surveyed the students about their impressions of Heidi or Howard. While both Heidi and Howard were rated as equally competent, students said they found Heidi less humble and more power hungry and self-promoting than Howard. **************************** The penury of women across award-winning and best selling case studies — coupled with their overrepresentation in “pink topics,” token status, impoverished depictions, and lack of guidance to instructors on how discuss any gender issues that might emerge in classroom discussion — has important implications for the education of our future business leaders. Perhaps most critically, the lack of women role models is an important source of “ second generation gender bias ,” defined as practices and patterns that appear gender neutral but inadvertently benefit men while putting women at a disadvantage. By perpetuating the idea that men are at the center of business, case studies unintentionally depict strong leadership as almost uniformly masculine. Showing only one model of leadership implicitly signals to both men and women that women are not suited for leadership, and deprives both of alternative role models for different ways of leading and developing a leadership identity. Further, this might suggest to women students or aspiring leaders that being a woman is a liability, thus discouraging them from seeing senior women leaders as a credible source of knowledge and support. Business schools must play a central role in socializing young men and women to see both genders as leaders. Just like organizations today are expected to have diversity measures in place, business schools should be held to a higher standard when it comes to the primary teaching tools they use. What would this mean in practice? Measuring the diversity of case protagonists and putting in place incentives to increase the representation of women protagonists is an obvious first step. But our analysis suggests that is not enough. Instructors of courses in which the topic of exercising leadership is central to the course content also need to be taught about second generation gender bias, how it affects the ways in which women protagonists are judged, and how to encourage students to recognize and value different ways of leading. And, as with any other change effort, multiple stakeholders must be involved, from business school deans to individual professors. Until then, by relying on a skewed distribution of case studies, business schools are continuing to support age-old stereotypes and biases about what makes a good leader. And as business becomes increasingly convinced that gender diversity is important, it’s time for educators to take more seriously their responsibility to teach students about the world they are preparing to enter. Find the original article here .