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Times Of India:

B-School bother: Scarcity of feminine diversity
- By Piya Singh
Times news network

Mumbai: When Ushma Sheth (23) sailed into New York University's Stern School of Business this year, she was convinced that being a traditional Hindu woman had titled the scales in her favour.

In fact, Ushma's essay on cultural diversity said that she was ready to break out of the system which forced her mother, a gold medalist in Economics, to stay home.

MBA Education consultancies that guide students through the admissions process feel that the 'woman manager from a third-world country card' should be leveraged to the fullest.

A recently -launched global initiative by some of the top U.S. B-School and corporation, moreover, is pushing to increase the number of women in MBA class from the present level of 30 percent.

Edu-bridge.com managing director Chirag Negandhi whose consultancy deals with around 150 applications in Mumbai, says, "While institutions like New York University are trying to increase the diversity in their varsities women managers from developing countries enjoy an advantage over their male counterparts."

Edu-Bridge claims that they have been convincing women about their higher chances of getting in and the strategy is beginning to pay off.

For instance, Edu-bridge's experience shows that in 2001-2002, the percentage of female applicants was 29 per cent with a 100 percent success rate compared to 80 percent for men.

Compare this to 16 percent in the previous year with a 75 percent acceptance rate for women and 86 percent for men

According to a report in the Business Week, the low percentage of women in MBA school (which hasn't picked up in the last decade) has led to the formation of a new non-profit organisation set up late 2001, whose mission is increase the number of women in the boardroom by first increasing women attending B-schools worldwide.

The movement is spearhead by the Michigan Business School and supported by organisations like Dell, Deloitte Consulting, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Kraft Foods, Protocer & Gamble and business Schools at Columbia, Dartmouth, California-Berkely, Chicago, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Virginia.

"Indian women should take advantage of this global movement. We have seen a sharp increase in women applicants over the last five years. More importantly, parents now have a different mindset and encourage daughters who are of marriageable age to become MBAs instead," says Eco Pvt Ltd managing Director Sonal Parekh, who runs an education consultancy service and has tie-ups with more than 100 universities worldwide.

The absence of role-models, fear of quantitative studies and anxieties of a work-life balance have been identified as the major deterrents for women joining MBA programmes by a study conducted by the Michigan Business School and Catalyst, a New York based nonprofit organisation focusing on women in business. Individual B-school too have taken up the cause. For instance, the McCombs School of Business, University of Texas at Austin has set up a women's network whose purpose is to improve the visibility of women in the business schools.

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