George Washington University School of Business Dean Linda Livingstone joined more than 45 college and university leaders at the White House Wednesday to commit to expanding opportunity for women in business.
The White House Council on Women and Girls and Council of Economic Advisors event was a platform to discuss the barriers that women face in earning leadership roles in the workforce—a series of disadvantages that often begins with a lack of equal access to top business schools.
“We are publicly committing ourselves, and our institutions, to advancing business school and workplace gender equality by inspiring and creating a level playing field for women and working families through a new set of best practices,” Dr. Livingstone said to colleagues during a panel discussion.
Tina Tchen, executive director of the White House Council on Women and Girls and chief of staff to First Lady Michelle Obama, and Valerie Jarrett, senior advisor to the president and chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, offered opening and closing remarks at the event, which included panel discussions with more than 150 educators and business, government and nonprofit leaders.
Attendees pledged to adopt a series of “best practices” including targeted outreach to working professionals and college and high school age women that will help them “envision a career in business.” They also pledged to develop flexible programs that take into account the “life-cycle challenges” that women face when they reenter the workforce or pursue a degree.
Colleges and universities also were charged with including men and women in conversation around work and family balance, facilitating mentoring experiences, networking opportunities and using teaching materials that reflect the issues faced by the modern, diverse workforce.
The pledge extends to internal practices at colleges and universities that create an inclusive workplace by addressing gender gaps in pay, promotion and hiring and encouraging conversations around equality and diversity.
According to Dr. Livingstone, both business schools and workplaces are at a crossroads.
In the United States, women represent only 35 percent of M.B.A. student populations and although 60 percent of college students are female only 43 percent of women major in business, she said.
“Finding solutions to gender inequality in business schools—and ultimately business itself—lies in putting more women into the pipeline toward degrees, faculty positions and deanships, as well as for leadership and CEO roles,” Dr. Livingstone said.
Schools will work with the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business to enact their commitments and refine practices that support opportunities for women.
Dr. Livingstone has worked with AACSB for about 14 years. She was the 2014 chair and is a current member of its board of directors.
“Deeply embedded in the accreditation AACSB standards is a commitment to social responsibility—that includes diversity on a global scale,” Dr. Livingstone said. “This commitment is a broad set of practices to encourage schools to find opportunities to make progress.”
GWSB has an undergraduate and graduate student body that is consistently more than 40 percent female—higher than the national average of 35 percent, according to Dr. Livingstone.
GW continues to establish initiatives to support female students, she said. For example, the GWSB partners with the Forté Foundation and last academic year awarded more than $1 million in scholarships to 17 M.B.A. students, the first cohort of Forté fellows. The 2015-16 academic year marks an expansion of the partnership with Forté to support female undergraduate students through the Rising Star Initiative.
Other opportunities for students include the student-run annual GW Women in Business Conference, which connects students with top female executives, and several women-focused entrepreneurship programs, such as ACTIVATE at GW, Springboard Enterprises and the Hot Mommas Project.
“I am continually impressed by our women students and their contributions to GW,” Dr. Livingstone said. “Their success is an affirmation that we are making progress in bringing women into the pipeline.”