Thursday, October 15, 2009

Why More Women Don't Get MBAs

A very interesting story from Fortune on the efforts by the Forte Foundation to encourage more women to pursue MBA degrees.

3 comments:

BG said...
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BG said...

What a complete and total waste of time and money. With all the problems in the world, these people actually believe the higest and best use of their resources is fighting a critical shortage of female MBA's? The disproportionate representation is far worse for men teaching in elementary schools, why not commit the foundation to that cause? At least in education a greater social good would be served, giving young boys male role models.

There is no lack of information or accessability to MBA programs, and no pattern or norm of discrimination. People, regardless of sex or ethnicity, are attracted to specific training and vocations. The world, the economy, and each individual, is best served by pursuing their own highest utility. A foundation professing to "know what is best" for women (or any other group) is the height of condescention and discrimination, particularly for something as societally irrelevant as an advanced business degree.

meep said...

Brian has a good point.

It's not clear to me that an MBA [definitely with respect to a traditional full-time program] is the best use of anybody's time. Given the alternative routes of education [howdy, OpenCourseWare and Harvard Working Knowledge podcasts], people desiring business education have much more efficient ways of getting this knowledge.

I've seen how these sorts of things have shaken out in academic fields, in trying to get more women, and it tends to attract some women who would've been better off not being in academia. Likewise, this effort can end up pushing a bunch of women into wasting time and money on these MBAs.