BGA | BUSINESS IMPACT
GUEST COLUMNL
Business Schools must walk the talk on gender
B usiness Schools across the world have made good progress in recruiting gender-balanced student cohorts. Yet this balance is not yet achieved within the faculty, and there are still far fewer women than men achieving professorships. It’s important to note that a significant male majority in a faculty where there’s a gender-balanced skills pipeline of business graduates simply can’t be a meritocracy; women are being excluded, either intentionally or through systemic practices that stop them being promoted proportionately, force them to leave, or prevent them from accessing roles in the first place. Success and popularity To understand one reason why there has been little change, turn to the Heidi- Howard study undertaken by Frank Flynn while he was at Columbia Business School [Flynn is now at Stanford Graduate School of Business] which demonstrated that the more successful women become, the less popular they are. Success and popularity are positively correlated for men but negatively correlated for women. Therefore, if progression in the world of academia is dependent on peer reviews, personal letters of recommendation, or the support of the head of department for any application for a professorship, it could be that high-performing women are disliked and more harshly judged than the man who is liked for being ambitious and competitive. Any subjective means
Recruitment bias Business Schools often require academics to have practiced in industry, and should therefore moderate for the fact that women face bias and are not promoted proportionately in many businesses. They are also less likely to have been promoted beyond their competence, or to exaggerate roles, than male peers. The simple hack of always having gender-balanced shortlists could have a significant impact on whether more women are successful. It’s also important that Business Schools make their female academics visible, are given the recognition they deserve, and given the space in their schedule to do more research. The more it becomes the norm to see women in senior roles, the easier it will be for other women to not be seen as an anomaly. To create a high-performing Business School, you need a faculty of high- performing, gender-balanced diverse academics, and you must create an inclusive environment to optimise the performance of all of them. It’s as much about the battle against the exclusion of women as it is for inclusion. Business School academics that wish to influence business leaders on how to run successful businesses must walk the talk with regards to gender balance and inclusion, and they will reap the benefits. Julia Muir is the Founder of the Automotive 30% Club and CEO of Gaia Innovation. She is also the author of Change the Game (2021).
of assessing an individual’s performance could be open to bias, favouritism and impression management, all of which will give an advantage to the current dominant majority. Workloads Are women being given extra workloads or agreeing to undertake more non- promotable tasks than their male colleagues at Business School? Women were assigned 55% of the work compared to 45% for men, in a 2018 report from Hive. Despite this 10% workload difference, both sexes completed 66% of their allocated work and the report noted that women are assigned and spend more time on non-promotable tasks (any activity that is beneficial to the organisation but doesn’t contribute to career advancement) than men. Women in faculty positions may be more greatly encumbered with extra non-research responsibilities as a result of their rarity and the desire to have a gender balance on administrative committees. The quantity of research published is a key performance indicator for an academic, and it’s usually the case that male academics publish a higher volume than their female peers. This could be due to the extra workload women have both at home and at work, or gender bias in commissioning of academic papers, or the peer review process. Editors should examine their processes and remove bias from the system, and Business School leaders should look for quality of output rather than quantity, and ensure fairer allocation of non-promotable tasks.
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