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Women last year accounted for 41 percent of the 258,192 people taking the Graduate Management Admission Test, or GMAT, which is a requirement for most MBA programs. That represents the sixth consecutive year of growth in women taking the test, the Graduate Management Admissions Council said this week. The number of men taking the exam fell for a third year in a row to 151,392.
In the United States, 39 percent of test takers were women, but in east Asia, women led the way. In China 64 percent of test takers were women. Overall about 117,000 test takers were Americans, compared with about 58,000 who were from east and southwast Asia.
In the United States “we’re not seeing the women in business schools that would be expected,” given that women now make up half the U.S. workforce, said Michelle Sparkman Renz, director of research for the council. It’s unclear why more women aren’t flocking to U.S. business schools, but clearly the corporate world has yet to embrace women in management.
Female MBAs who graduated from 2000 to 2011 and are working full-time made only 81 percent of what their male counterparts are making, according to the council's research.
The gap may be narrowing for younger MBAs, the council found. For the class of 2011, ages 28 to 34, MBA graduates closed the gap in consulting, manufacturing and technology.
Not that women overseas are thrilled with the opportunities they find. The report surveyed alumni of international business school classes from 2000 to 2011 and found only 54 percent of the women polled said there were equal opportunities in the workplace, compared with 85 percent of men who thought so.
The report should be a "a call to action" for the U.S. government and U.S. companies, said Elissa Ellis Sangster, executive director of the Forte Foundation, an advocacy group for women in leadership. Emerging markets such as China, she said, are encouraging women to become business leaders, and the United States could be left behind. In this country, she added, we should also be saying, "let's educate women in business and let's have them become leaders."
Women held only about 16 percent of board seats and 14 percent of executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies last year, according to a study by Catalyst, a research firm.
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Blah, blah, blah. Same old, same old propaganda. Women make up for less wages in so many other ways we can hardly keep up with it. From alimony, to lucrative divorce settlements, to free drinks, free parties, free dates, financially oppressing men for the last 200 years, ad nauseam, to free gear given away by cosmetic and fashion stores, to benefits from dead husbands, to...like I said, the list is endless. What IS their problem?
OOOhhh, you sound like you are a little angry at women. You could get all those things, too, if you would just try harder!
I'll just say that when I was in MBA school the school bent over backwards to help the women in the program with scholarships and other assistance. They were also the ones first in line to lobby the professors for a better grade after every test.
Their problem is Neanderthal's like you. I hope to God you are single and have no female children. No women needs to be imprisoned with an idiot!
The report did not include critical differences in how each sex use the MBA. Whie only 1 in 20 male MBAs never works full-time, 1 in 3 female MBAs never work full-time. Law and business degrees are used by women to gain access to top-earning men rather than top-earning careers. The MRS degree is alive in its modern form.
Grumpy Old McCain wrote "No women needs to be imprisoned with an idiot!"
therockofages described male financial servitude.
You're right Mary. All we have to do is date and marry for money rather than sex.
Meanwhile dinners go un-cooked and children go un-raised. Progress?
BMOC...
Thanks for inviting us to your pity party.
Get you lazy @ss off the couch, and cook your own damn meals and help with raising the children.
Im not sure if it's because women WANT to work or women HAVE to work (due to the serious problem that income hasnt kept up with inflation)...but what I do notice is more and more kids have to stay in daycare/afterschool programs. Im all for women in the work place but lets be honest here, who's raising our kids?? Its the elephant in the room. My wife and I both work white collar jobs and haven't had kids yet because honestly we don't have the time.
"It’s unclear why more women aren’t flocking to U.S. business schools, but clearly the corporate world has yet to embrace women in management."
Maybe because graduate school costs are freaking INSANE. You're not guaranteed a job like a doctor or lawyer would be. Maybe it's that women are getting smarter and deciding they can work their way up the chain, rather than sell their soul for an MBA.
Or because women are flooding to other areas like academia. Most of my business professors were women.
from the article "Emerging markets such as China, she said, are encouraging women to become business leaders, and the United States could be left behind."
The US has an excess of MBAs and a shortage of engineers and scientists such that the former are unemployed and the latter are imported. Do American women have a problem with good pay in R&D ?
Thanks for the article. This is a complex issue. We are seeing more women in MBA programs. Though they are more likely to be younger and from less quantitative backgrounds than their male counterparts. These factors do not account for the persistent pay gap (nor does later having children - as a someone suggested in the comments) - See Catalyst.org for their studies on this topic.
We need to do more to support women while they are in business school. This is not about giving them a handout, but empowering them to be successful in business school and to leverage the MBA throughout their professional careers.
www.slingbacksandslingshots.com
Why do women need support when they are in business school? What type of support do men get. It seems every time women "fail" at doing something it is because of gender. Why can't they assume the responsibilities that come with their rights? If you want to reach the top do what men do. Work long hours, forgo having a life for the most part, ie raising kids, dying younger, getting sicker etc. Also, how many women MBAs marry beneath their level of education? Very few. It is interesting to see marriage and childbirth decline as the level of women's education increases. Why can't women just agree that there are some things men are better suited for and some that women are better suited for? Education isn't one of them...men and women are equally smart but in different ways. However, men are better negotiators that is why they are paid more. They ask for more, especially at the beginning and it continues throughout their career. If women want more ask for it, don't whine why you didn't get it. Now let the men bashers begin their diatribe.
My question is very simple;
How many MBAs do we need?
It would appear to me that with the job market the way it is, an MBA might qualify someone for a job flipping burgers along side the High School dropout.
And isn't it possible that a good number of people holding an MBA are in fact responsible for the current economic woes facing this country? Wasn't it those people who had the grand idea of closing American factories to reduce manufacturing costs and locate those same factories overseas in less costly production locations? Of course they never finished the thought process that brought them to those conclusions. If they had, they would have realized that when you terminate the employment of the factory worker, they no longer have the income to buy the product.
They never learned what Henry Ford knew. To be prosperous, the manufacturer needs to pay his employees enough to be able to afford the product they make.
I get tired of these so-called gender pay gap studies mentioned in these articles, take a look at how they collect the data and you'll see the problem.
Why can't women stop complaining and expecting everything to be handed to them because of their sex and put in the hard work and the long hours that it takes to be successful at whatever field you go into? I have known many women who are in leadership positions because they worked for it, I have also known women who expected to get ahead just by crying discrimination. It takes time, experience, skill, drive and ambition to want, and be able, to lead people. You can't graduate school and start crying about how you're being discriminated against because you're a woman, a male new grad starts at the bottom also.