Business School Faculty: Missing Women

Combined Faculty Counts at Top 5 Business Schools

After attending a recent conference at Harvard Business School and noting that most of the speakers were blonde women, I decided to count business school faculty by sex and race to see what these distributions actually are.*

Business Schools regularly track their faculty by sex, as required for rankings such as the Financial Times. But they may not track their faculty by race, and are especially unlikely to track their faculty by sex and race combined.

The figure above shows the combined counts of Business Week's 2012 Top Five Business Schools: Chicago, Harvard, Wharton, Stanford, and Northwestern.

Of over 1,200 faculty across these schools, a full 85 percent are white, and most of these white faculty (83%) are men. White men make up over 70% of business school faculty as a whole. White women constitute only 14% of business school faculty, non-white men make up 11%, and fewer than 4% of business school faculty are non-white women.

Of the top 5 business schools, the Stanford faculty is least diverse, with 77% white men, 12% white women, 8% non-white men, and only 2% non-white women.

Chicago does only slightly better, with 73% white men, 12% white women, 11% non-white men, and 3% non-white women.

Wharton does slightly better than this, with 72% white men, 14% white women, 11% non-white men, and 4% non-white women.

Northwestern has a faculty made up of 67% white men, ties with Harvard for the most (16%) white women, has 12% non-white men, and has the most (5%) non-white women of business schools.

Harvard has the fewest white men (66%), the most non-white men (15%), and ties with Northwestern for the most (16%) white women. Harvard's count of non-white women faculty is average at 4%.

According to the U.S. Census, white men make up 39% of the general population, white women make up 40%, non-white men make up 10%, and non-white women make up 11%.

To reach parity with the general population, these business schools would need to nearly halve their white male faculty, more than triple their white female faculty, and triple their non-white female faculty. They could keep their non-white male faculty about the same.

It's interesting that white and non-white women faculty are similarly underrepresented. One would expect non-white women to be more so, but traditional gender roles differ by race. White women's racial privilege may be off-set by the traditional association of white women with the upper classes and stay-at-home moms and the traditional association of non-white women working outside the home.

It's also interesting that non-white men are as represented in business schools as in the population at large. When we break-down business school faculty by racial group, it becomes clear that minority groups are not equally represented.

By far the largest group of minority male faculty is South Asian men (e.g., Indian), making up 57%. This is followed by East Asian men, with 29%. Numbers of black men (9%) and especially Hispanic men (5%) are small.

A very different pattern emerges for minority women faculty. There are far fewer women than men faculty of South Asian descent -- 16% as opposed to 57%. By far the largest group of minority women faculty is East Asian women (57%). Next is black women, making up 22%. There are only 2 Hispanic women (4% of minority women) in the top 5 business schools.

Why is there such a difference in racial groups by sex? This speaks to the importance of studying the intersectionality of sex and race. Everyone has both, yet gender studies typically focus on white women and studies of race almost always focus on men, leaving out minority women entirely.

Traditional gender roles and stereotypes within minority communities may be partly to blame for the different representations of men and women from these communities within business schools.

The relative dearth of South Asian women compared to South Asian men in these high-status business school contexts may reflect the sometimes extreme devaluation of women and their subservient roles in South Asia. For example, in India there are 6 million fewer girls than boys under the age of 6, and media has covered recent horrific cases of gang rape against girls in the country. South Asian women may not be able to count on the relatively large network of South Asian men to support them in business schools.

Stereotypes and power within the family may be more positive for East Asian and black women than for East Asian and black men. The lack of Hispanics is particularly notable in business schools. Perhaps this reflects the relatively low status that Hispanics hold among minority groups in the U.S. today.

In short, the faculty who are teaching the next generation of top business school graduates, who are likely to go on to play the most powerful roles in business, is missing women's voices, is dominated by white men, and does not represent the population at large. What are the implications of this for business education and practice?

*A graduate student, Hadiya Roderique, and I went into each faculty member's web page at the top 5 business schools and noted his or her sex and race. For race we used our best judgements based on photo(s), names, and sometimes prior institutional affiliations.