Five top business schools have reached gender parity in their MBA programs, representing a record, The Wall Street Journal reported Nov. 2.
Women now make up at least half of the full-time MBA candidates at State College, Pa.-based Penn State University; Washington, D.C.-based George Washington University; Baltimore-based Johns Hopkins University; Philadelphia-based University of Pennsylvania; and the University of Oxford in England.
The Forté Foundation — a nonprofit group focused on advancing women into leadership roles through business education — reported that 42% of full-time MBA students at its partner schools (including 50 top-ranked universities in the U.S., Canada and Europe) are now women. That represents a 33% gain from 2013.
Although women have earned the majority of bachelor's degrees in the U.S. since the early 1980s, representation in MBA programs has been slower to catch up, according to the Journal. Now, business schools are making concerted efforts to recruit more women by offering targeted scholarships, promoting the value of an MBA to undergraduates and asking current students to call female applicants and share their stories.
There is a pipeline from MBA programs to C-suites, and more women in both is essential to closing the pay gap, according to Elissa Sangster, chief executive of the Forté Foundation.
"The 50-50 is representative of a pathway into business leadership," Ms. Sangster told the Journal. "If we don't see women having equal access to those opportunities, that means they don't get that education, they don't get that job post-MBA, they don't get that salary."
A greater share of women in the classroom can also help put female students at ease, Shrijana Khanal, an MBA student at Johns Hopkins' Carey Business School, told the publication.
"I feel a sense of being able to speak my mind without fear of impostor syndrome in my classes, which is a new feeling for me," Ms. Khanal said. "It just feels natural; this is how it's supposed to be."