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Women still struggle to make it to the top rungs of the corporate ladder. The Simmons College School of Management has one possible solution: an all-women MBA program specifically catered to aspiring female business professionals.
The Boston-based school says its program “delivers essential business and management skills and much more – including an understanding of how gender dynamics shape women’s leadership opportunities, strategies for managing those dynamics to achieve leadership success, and an emphasis on corporate social responsibility.” The program has been around since 1975. (The school does offer other co-ed programs.)
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the dean of the college, Cathy Minehan, discusses the advantages of enrolling in an all-female MBA program. Before getting into academics, Minehan was the chief of the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
“Women don’t negotiate the same way that men do,” Minehan tells the Journal. “We teach classic negotiation theory, classic negotiation practice, but we also teach about the situation women will find in [the outside world] and then how to deal with it.”
She also equates the school with HBCUs because both “provide not only a first-class education, but also an environment and culture in which it’s easier to talk about some subjects.”
Minehan doesn’t think that a gender perspective should replace the traditional facts and figures that are taught in business schools, but supports a discussion about the issues tied with sex and gender.
What are your thoughts on an all-female business school education? Or single-sex education in general?
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