women in business

Schoolwide efforts are among the threads weaved into the fabric of an Olin Business School MBA program ranked No. 4 in the world for women, according to a Financial Times analysis — placing it behind only Stanford and the University of California, Berkeley among U.S. universities, and China’s Shanghai Jiao Tong, but just ahead of Harvard.

President Barack Obama recently announced new rules aimed at encouraging companies to provide salary information by workers’ race, gender and ethnicity. While obtaining good data is a necessary step in helping to shrink the gender pay gap, it will only be a starting point, said Hillary Sale, an expert on corporate governance and women’s leadership.

On Aug. 5, Mahendra R. Gupta, PhD, dean and the Geraldine J. and Robert L. Virgil Professor of Accounting and Management at Olin Business School at Washington University in St. Louis, attended a convening at the White House hosted by the White House Council on Women and Girls and the Council of Economic Advisers. Mark Brostoff, associate dean and director of Olin’s Weston Career Center, also attended.

Medical and law schools have seen the percentage of women enrolled grow steadily over the past 20 years, to the point that women frequently represent at least half of most classes. Business schools have yet to catch up with this trend but the Olin School of Business is pioneering the way for women to increase their numbers in MBA programs. More than 800 people are expected to attend the National Association of Women MBA’s annual conference and career fair in early November at WUSTL. This event comes after Olin’s admission to the Forte Foundation, a consortium dedicated to promoting women in business.