Not Just Men in Gray Flannel Suits as More Women Attend MBA Programs

At Rotterdam School of Management, MBA students join diverse teams where 97% of the class comes from outside of the Netherlands. Besides this commitment to international students, one school brochure explains how the RSM Kilimanjaro Leadership Project and Women Empowerment at RSM, “aims to address the gender issues in business and the underrepresentation of female leaders in the boardroom, by encouraging women to empower women.”          

Most MBA projects ask students to work as a team. Not many conclude with the expectation they will be climbing Kilimanjaro – Africa’s tallest mountain.

Every fall, the Kilimanjaro Leadership Project offers women attending Business School and women with their MBAs the chance to work as a team scaling the nearly 20,000 foot Tanzanian mountain. As the school’s site explains, “We challenged a team of MBA women to stretch themselves beyond their leadership perceptions and reach new heights.” Climbing Kilimanjaro was designed “to be a transformative experience where participants master key leadership competencies, including understanding and using power, team building and communication”.

A recent participant says climbing Kilimanjaro is one reason her gender has not held her back. Katharina Holch earned her MBA from RSM in 2010. Six weeks before her climb, she wrote in a 2012 blog posting that, “One thing I learned during the MBA is that we can learn a lot from role models. I also like inspirational quotes, and one I’ve kept close at heart is the following by Sir Edmund Hillary: ‘It is not the mountain we conquer, but ourselves.’”

Following graduation, Holch explored her career options. “I wanted to change industries to a more dynamic work environment, which included changing companies...The MBA degree allowed me to combine my theoretical and practical knowledge and look for a different job in a different company – but moreover, really opened me up to personal development and cross-cultural teamwork.”

She began working for GE Healthcare through the 2-year Experienced Commercial Leadership Program, which is specifically designed for MBA graduates. She now works as a customer relations manager for GE Healthcare Germany.

She is familiar with complaints about case studies with few female protagonists, but at Rotterdam School of Management she says, “I did not have the feeling that women were underrepresented in our case study work. More important for me was to push the overall topic of helping women to advance their career (at RSM I did this through the ‘Women in Management’ Club which I co-led during the MBA). In terms of case studies, I always felt the topic was more important than who the main actors were.”

Perhaps even more significant is what women with MBAs are doing 10 years after earning their degree. A decade after graduation, a 2010 study by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation determined that MBAs have left the labor force in greater numbers than women in other profession such as law or medicine. Amongst elite institutions, the numbers of women leaving is even higher. This is why writer Laura Hemphill suggested in a September article in The New Yorker magazine that women should forgo the degree entirely.

“Consider other uses of those two years,” Hemphill writes. “Instead of relying on an MBA to boost her skillset, a woman could teach herself a hard skill like programming or Chinese, or she could start her own business.”

Holch can’t imagine spending a year learning Chinese, a ‘hard skill’ she might be hard pressed to remember. “I could have spent a year learning Chinese, but would have forgotten it all by now as I would not have had a chance to use it. The experience and network I took out of the MBA and the personal development I gained from it will be with me all my life.”

She agrees that all potential MBA students, not just women, should examine how necessary the degree is for their career options. Yet Holch is quick to add that, “…we have to ask why the MBA ladies choose to leave work. Is it family considerations – and can they afford to do so because they already have made a career because of the MBA? Do they plan to return to work, and does the MBA make that easier? What are the reasons?” To her, MBAs enjoy not only increased earning potential but also increased flexibility which clearly improves their career options.

This article is sponsored Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University (RSM).