Women Business Deans Meet to Share Challenges, Solutions
The underrepresented group is quickly growing, with about 29% of the deanships of US B-schools now held by women.
Ann Harrison (center), dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley.
Photo: Haas School of Business
In a conference room at the University of California at San Diego Rady School of Management in October 2022, 10 deans from some of the leading business schools in the US sat around a table talking about where demand for business education is growing, as opposed to declining. Then the conversation turned to a problem female professionals and executives often face: taking on too many tasks, from committee memberships to conference planning, that don’t lead to promotions and may even hinder their advance.
“We heard from the co-author of the book The No Club, which documents this statistically, and I realized that women don’t enjoy all the extra they do,” says Ann Harrison, dean of the Haas School of Business at the University of California at Berkeley. “They’re just asked to do more and say no less often. When they do say no, they face backlash.”