Financial Times Global Top 20 MBA - Building Gender Balanced Business

WOMEN-omics has ranked the top global business schools according to the gender balance in their MBA programmes, faculty and advisory boards. The data is drawn from the FT’s latest Global MBA Rankings 2009.

• Only five of the top twenty business schools in the world have more than 35% of their MBA students represented by women (Wharton, Harvard, Stanford, MIT and Chicago) – all of which are US institutions;

• The top three business schools as ranked by gender balance in their MBA programmes are ranked at 57, 85 and 87 globally (George Washington, Boston, Grenoble);

• The US leads Asia and Europe in terms of gender balance in its MBA programmes. Eleven of the top 20 in the WOMEN-omics league table are US institutions, followed by Europe with six and Asia with three;

• There is no apparent correlation between the number of women students attending MBA programmes and the percentage of women on the faculty. Half of Harvard Business School’s faculty is made up of women and it performs well on gender balance in its MBA programmes (38%). But then again, the University of Strathclyde Business School has the same proportion of women in its faculty but comes out at the bottom of our list (21%);

• Some of the major business schools have actually experienced a slight reduction in the percentage of women attending their MBA programmes since the 2008 rankings were released. For example: Wharton has gone from 37% to 36%; IMD from 24% to 22%; and Stanford from 38% to 36%.

• Insead’s gender balance on its MBA programmes has increased since 2008 from 24% to 29%, reflecting its own efforts to increase the percentage as reported on this website (Interview with Frank Brown);

• The biggest gains were made by George Washington University which went from sixth place to first place in our gender balance league table, and the Boston University School of Management which rose from eighth place to the second position (in both cases 45% of their MBA students consisted of women);

• The biggest losers this year were SDA Bocconi which fell out of the WOMEN-omics top 20 (the percentage of women on its MBA programmes dropped from 40% to 29%) and Cass which went from 16th place last year to one of our bottom ranking schools (37% to 26%);

• A number of the top ranked schools by gender balance in 2008 were not in the list of the top 100 this year including our top two leaders of last year: McGill University – Desautels and Shanghai Jiao Tong University. WOMEN-omics has reported elsewhere on McGill, showing that its high figure of 53% of women MBA students recorded in the FT’s ranking (2008) was a largely unexplained blip in an otherwise good average record.(The Quebec Phenomenon?).

This table presents the world’s top business schools according to the Financial Times, and the percentage of women MBA Students, Faculty and Board members they have.

Below you’ll find two tables. One shows the 20 business schools that have achieved the best gender balance in terms of their MBA students. McGILL University in Canada and Shanghai Jiao Tong University in China top the list. They are both at over 50% female students (53% and 52% respectively).

The other table presents the world’s 20 top global business schools (according to the FT). There is not much overlap between the two.

Only five schools made both lists. And all but one of them (IE based in Spain) are American…

• NYU Stern
• Stanford
• Wharton
• Harvard
• IE Business School

All five of these schools have over 36% women in their MBA programmes.

How did they do it? Why did they do it? And why didn’t the others? That’s what this section of the site will dig into over the coming weeks, with interviews with their Deans and alumni. Watch this space.

This table presents the world’s top business schools according to the Financial Times, and the percentage of women MBA Students, Faculty and Board members they have.

See the full FT global ranking