It has been more than half a century since the nation’s top universities began admitting women to their MBA programs. After more than fifty years, business schools are at last catching up to law and medical schools in terms of gender parity. As reported by Bloomberg, women now comprise forty percent or more of MBA students at Harvard, Wharton, Yale, Northwestern, Dartmouth and MIT.
Just five years ago, many full-time MBA programs had classes comprised of one-third women – now there’s a race to see who will get to fifty percent first. This has major implications for the future of corporate America. While women fill about half of middle management positions, women hold just twenty five percent of senior jobs and nineteen percent of directorships at S&P five hundred companies according to Catalyst, a New York research and advocacy group for women.
Only twenty-two women, or four point four percent, are chief executive officers at the nation’s largest companies. Of course, it’s one thing to have a job, it’s quite another to be paid the same as men. According to Bloomberg, men in executive positions continue to earn far larger bonuses than women.
