Where Have All the Women MBAs Gone?

When it comes to advanced degrees, the one most in need of an image makeover may well be the Masters of Business Administration.

by H.M. Cauley

January 1, 2005

" T he perception is that if you're getting an MBA you want to be a top executive at a big company, and that connotes being at the job all the time, putting on the heels at 6 a.m. and working late into the evening - and weekends," says Tamara Snyder, a 30-year-old Emory MBA graduate presently in a management training program with The Home Depot. "There's also a myth that if you go to business school, you're going to work your whole life."

Recently, Snyder sat on a panel of women MBAs at Emory University as part of a conference designed to dispel the misconceptions about business careers. Those mistaken ideas -including the one that every MBA turns into a high-heeled overachiever who never leaves the office - are why business schools across the country are reporting fewer women applicants. According to a survey conducted by the Graduate Management Admissions Council, the number of women applying to traditional two-year MBA programs is down by 42%.

Working to reverse that trend is the Forté Foundation, a three-year-old nonprofit group that hosts symposiums on the positive aspects of business degrees; introduces would-be students to successful women graduates; offers scholarships and workshops; and sponsors internships.

Getting real women MBAs to share their success stories is one of the best ways to encourage more women to consider business school, says Elissa Ellis, the Foundation's executive director. And it gives her a chance to debate some of the reasons women give for avoiding going back to class:

  ¥ I can't handle the financial setback of leaving a job and taking on a full-time MBA program.
  ¥ There aren't enough businesswomen role models for me to follow.
  ¥ I want to do something good with my career and a business career won't have a positive effect on society.
  ¥ Going into an MBA program will disrupt the balance of my personal and professional lives.

The dropping number of women MBA students at Emory's Goizueta Business School caused officials there to sit up and take notice.

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"Historically, the school did quite well attracting women," says Julie Barefoot, associate dean of MBA admissions at Emory. "Typically, about a third of our class was women. But about four years ago, the numbers dropped to about 20%. It was very concerning."

The school countered the slide by coming up with several plans to recruit women, including joining forces with the FortŽ Foundation and hosting the September 2004 seminar.

"We've had special receptions for women and breakfasts for women hosted by the Goizueta Women in Business, a group of faculty, alumni and students," says Barefoot. "We created a brochure that highlighted the leadership opportunities for women here."

Barefoot found that women candidates were looking for a supportive and family-oriented environment: "So we made some subtle changes in the literature we produced, highlighting women, talking about what our program can do for them and the value of an MBA degree."

And the results have been positive.

"This year we enrolled 34% women in our two-year program," says Barefoot.

When compared to the fact that women account for about half the student population in medical and law schools, women MBA candidates still have a ways to go. It also means that fewer women will be in the pipeline ready to take seats on corporate boards and assume c-level positions in the future.

"It's largely a flexibility issue," says Ellis, who holds an MBA from Texas A&M. "More women are entering law school and medical school because they offer a clear path: You go there immediately after undergraduate school, and you come out doing good things with flexible options. What business has not done is clearly define what the options are for MBAs."

For Snyder, an MBA meant having flexibility as she looked into the future.

"Think of all the movies in the 1980s and 1990s that said, 'You can have it all!,'" says Snyder. "Now we're realizing that we can't necessarily have it all. Not everyone wants to be a high-powered businesswoman with a frantic pace of life."

Instead, Snyder saw an MBA as away to shape her own career path: "I really saw my decision to get my MBA as enhancing my opportunity to have balance," she says. "Maybe someday I'll want to start my own business and having an MBA is another tool to allow that to become a reality."

She also asserts that an MBA often results in a higher salary: "If a woman wants to have flexibility to reduce her work hours while raising a child, she is still often able to contribute more to her family's income."

Money is a major factor that keeps women out of MBA programs. A survey of business school applicants conducted by MBA.com found that 41% of the women responding said they would incur debt going back to school, while only 29% of the men faced that problem. Some women have gotten around the financial quandary by going back to school part-time, but even those more flexible programs saw a 48% decrease in applicants last year.

"Most MBA programs have a work experience requirement of two to three years before you can come into the classroom," explains Ellis. "So now you're leaving a job with a salary to go into debt to go to school. It becomes a commitment issue. And if you're married, you're asking a spouse to make that commitment with you. That's one of the reasons [the Foundation] gives out about $1.8 million in scholarships."

Liza Tirado, a 2004 MBA grad from the University of North Carolina, found that leaving the workforce to return to school was a significant challenge.

"The more competitive programs require work experience, and you do need it to succeed," says Tirado, 32, who handles marketing for Marietta-based Atlanta Accent Management, a firm of speech language pathologists who work with companies and individuals to improve English pronunciation and communication. "But by the time you complete your undergraduate studies and have three years of work experience, you're in your prime and thinking about having children. That creates another struggle."

Tirado, a member of the National Society of Hispanic MBAs, found little support in her family for pursuing an advanced degree. "In my culture, an MBA isn't ingrained; even an undergraduate degree isn't," she says. "But I did find support in organizations and mentors who were able to direct me."

Indeed, another concern of would-be women MBAs is the perceived lack of women role models to emulate, says Ellis.

"After 30 years in mainstream business, women still make up less than 16% of the corporate officers in America's 500 largest companies," she says, citing the 2002 report, Catalyst Census of Women Corporate Officers and Top Earners. "The Forté forums are part of our broad agenda to boost the number of women leaders in business."

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H.M. Cauley dropped out of an MBA program after two semesters that involved way too much math.