During Jennifer Long’s first semester in the business school, she remembers some of the women in one of her classes seemed hesitant to raise their hands in a room where about 70 percent of students were men.
“If the class was closer to 50-50, women would probably feel more comfortable because they may feel like there’s someone in the room who has a similar opinion,” said Long, now a second-year business administration graduate student.
Long’s thought process aligns with the business school’s new initiative aiming to increase the portion of female MBA students to 50 percent by 2020, the 100th anniversary of women’s suffrage in the United States.
“We believe that women have certainly come a long way, but there’s a lot more places where women need to make progress in order for women to really have a strong voice in areas that really impacts their life,” said Joyce Russell, business school vice dean and leader of the Women’s Initiative Board, the panel that is pioneering the effort.
The business school will officially announce the “50/50 by 2020” plan on March 5 at the school’s annual Women Leading Women symposium.
Women made up 34 percent of incoming full-time MBA students at University of Maryland in fall 2014, according to Daryl James, a business school spokesman. And among the top 26 business schools worldwide, women’s representation ranges from 22 to 43 percent this year, according to MBA50.com.
“If we can be a leader in this area, I think we can show other business schools the true power of having this more balanced gender composition in our program,” said Alex Triantis, the business school dean.
Russell said there could be several reasons women are underrepresented in MBA programs, such as a lack of encouragement of young girls or scarcity of role models.
“Women don’t see other women in some of these senior positions in organizations,” she said. “If you look at top positions in these companies, if you look in the C-suites, you’re mostly going to see men. If that keeps up, we’re never going to really change these companies to get more women in.”
But having more women as business leaders would be beneficial, Russell said, as they tend to foster collaborative work environments and can offer insight into promoting “family-friendly practices” and resolving “work-life” issues.
“They’re better able to represent our population, our workforce, consumers,” she said. “Instead of requiring women change to fit the culture, we think that by having a strong corps at the top, maybe our culture will change to better accommodate the diversity of our population.”
The “50/50 by 2020” plan is made up of three facets. First, business school officials want to broaden the pipeline of female students coming to the business school by reaching out to middle- and high-school girls to get them excited about business, Russell said. The business school has hosted two annual Future Women in Business Conferences for high school students.
The second part of the initiative will focus on expanding programming like Smith Women’s Week, which involves daily events for students, faculty, staff and alumnae.
The final part of the strategy is improving job placement for female MBA graduates.
“What else can we do to place women at very strategic places and organizations?” Russell said. “How can we assist them in moving up? We may have workshops on negotiation and such so they can be placed at higher levels.”
First-year MBA student Krystal Duffus said increasing diversity in the business school would result in more challenging conversations and new perspectives.
“If you think about what boardrooms look like now, it’s similar to what the business school classrooms look like now,” she said. “When you bring more women to the business school, it sets the framework for having more women go up the corporate ladder.”
