Harvard Business School Case Study - Gender Equity - NYTimes.com

Have you read the latest NY Times article about gender equity at Harvard Business School?  It’s an interesting read and, for me, thought provoking.  Over the last several years, I have spent a lot of my time working on gender equity issues in law firms.  I am partner of a BigLaw law firm, and our track record on retaining women is consistent with our peers – which is to say that it is poor.  Over the last few years, we have instituted new initiatives and time will tell if they are enough.  By next year, 75% of our junior and mid-level associates will be women, so we better get gender equity issues right.  The HBS experience might be instructive for BigLaw, and it might be instructive for other institutions.  It does pose a number of intriguing questions:  how does the HBS approach square with/compliment the Lean In message of Sheryl Sandberg?  Will the efforts of HBS mean anything 10 years down the road for these graduates?  And, if so, what?  Do the efforts of HBS administrators address the sorts of concerns expressed by Anne Marie Slaughter in the Atlantic last year?  With changes like those made at HBS, can women “have it all”?

What do you think?

Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity

By JODI KANTOR

September 7, 2013

BOSTON — When the members of the Harvard Business School class of 2013 gathered in May to celebrate the end of their studies, there was little visible evidence of the experiment they had undergone for the last two years. As they stood amid the brick buildings named after businessmen from Morgan to Bloomberg, black-and-crimson caps and gowns united the 905 graduates into one genderless mass.

But during that week’s festivities, the Class Day speaker, a standout female student, alluded to “the frustrations of a group of people who feel ignored.” Others grumbled that another speechmaker, a former chief executive of a company in steep decline, was invited only because she was a woman. At a reception, a male student in tennis whites blurted out, as his friends laughed, that much of what had occurred at the school had “been a painful experience.”

He and his classmates had been unwitting guinea pigs in what would have once sounded like a far-fetched feminist fantasy: What if Harvard Business School gave itself a gender makeover, changing its curriculum, rules and social rituals to foster female success?

Harvard Business School Case Study - Gender Equity - NYTimes.com