Women business school academicians: Disparities and progress

Sex Roles, Vol. 5, No. 5, 1979

Women Business School Academicians: Disparities and Progress 1

Diana Robertson

Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania

The recency o f the phenomenon o f increased numbers o f women business school professors led to an investigation o f the characteristics o f 1,492 female faculty members. The data suggest that women with very recent degrees are better prepared than their forerunners: They are more likely than those who received earlier degrees to hold a doctorate, to have published, to have hem a prior management position, and to teach in a larger and better school A comparison o f male and female subsamples reveals that the women are less likely than men to hold a doctorate; this single factor greatly accounts for women's inequity in rank and administrative position. Implications o f the findings on students and on curriculum are elaborated.

The present article focuses on the characteristics of a group of women who are business school faculty members. Rather than comparing their status to that of male professors (Fulton, 1975), characteristics of those who have more recently stepped into this academic role are compared with those who have been teaching for some years. Examination of the data allows for the citing of trends, discussion of issues female professors face, and conjecture about the implications for future female and male business school professors and their students.

At the same time, a small subsample of female business professors was compared to male colleagues to determine the nature of faculty differences. If male and female business school faculty members do differ substantially in their characteristics, it must be noted in what way they do so.

A preliminary version of this article was presented to the Academy of Management, San Francisco, August, 1978. The author wishes to thank Howard E. Mitchell, Director of the Human Resources Center, for his comments on an earlier draft.

635 0360-0025/79/1000-0635 $03.00/0 © 1979 Plenum Publishing Corporation

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This study answers a number of questions about women business school professors, including

1. What are their educational and business experience backgrounds? 2. In what subject areas are they presently teaching? 3. What are their present ranks? Are they likely to be administrators as

well as professors? 4. How recent a phenomenon is the women business professor? 5. Have there been increases in the number of women receiving higher de-

grees in business in the past few years? 6. At what schools are they most likely to be teaching?

Two implicit normative perspectives are present: (1) comparison of the status of women business school academicians now versus prior to 1970 and (2) comparison of women to men business school faculty members.

RESEARCH DESIGN

The study was designed to provide a profile of the 1,492 female business school faculty members identified from the American Assembly of Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB) faculty personnel directory published in 1976. These women comprise approximately 9% of the faculty listings in that directory. The directory includes complete faculty member listings from 470 colleagues and universities, or 89% of the member schools of AACSB. Membership is held by most schools offering either a separate business program or a number of business courses. School membership is voluntary; it is based upon interest in improving collegiate education for business. Included in the directory is informa- tion from nonaccredited as well as accredited schools. These listings are compre- hensive and are not biased according to size of school or accreditation.

The AACSB directory includes for each person listed such characteristics as rank, primary and secondary teaching areas, degrees held and year each was received, prior academic and management positions held, number of certificates, organizational affiliations, major publications, and college or university affiliations. Current directories of colleges and universities were used to include a number of school dimensions, in addition to the individual faculty member characteristics. Thus, the data provide a profile of the female business school faculty member and a delineation of the type of school in which she is most likely to teach.

In addition, the group of 92 women who list marketing as their primary teaching area was designated a subsample. Marketing professors were chosen because the percentage of women professors in this field has very recently begun to increase. Characteristics of present female marketing professors may portend

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well or ill for their successors. Also, women constitute approximately 4.5% of the professors in marketing. This ratio is representative of the proportion of women in several other fields including quantitative methods (3.6%), management (4.8%), industrial and labor relations (4.7%), personnel and organizational behavior (4.8%), and economics (6.8%).

Ninety-two men who similarly identified marketing as their primary teaching area were used as a comparison base for the female marketing professors. This male sample was drawn by first listing all the male marketing faculty members and then matching them to the women in marketing on the single character- istic of year of highest degree. Within the pool o f men for each year, the number of men needed to match the women for that year was randomly selected. The year of receiving highest degree was considered the most important criterion for matching the two groups because of the study's focus on recency of degree. This matching also assured comparability on length of experience, which is critical to any comparison of rank.

R E S U L T S

Characteristics of Women Business School Academicians

Rank. Women in the sample tend to be concentrated on the lower rungs of the academic hierarchy (see Table I). One quarter of the women are lecturers or instructors, categories outside the normal tenure track progression at most schools. Traditionally, academic women have been proportionately overrepre- sented as instructors, lecturers, and in research positions (e.g., Bernard, 1964). The attractions of part-time employment are believed to account to some ex- tent for this phenomenon. The geographical immobility of many married women also limits their employment choices and may force them into positions not ultimately satisfying to career goals. The large percentage of women who are assistant professors reflects the recent increases of women entering business

Table I. Academic Rank of Male and Female Business School Academicians

Academic rank Male Female

Professor 32% 16% Associate professor 26% 21% Assistant professor 31% 38% Lecturer or instructor 10% 24.5% Visiting professor 1% .5%

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school teaching as a profession. These women will have an opportunity to compete for associate professor and full professor slots. If the next several years do not bring increases in the percentages of female associate and full professors, then one must question how the women's progress has been slowed.

Administrative Position. The female business faculty member ris unlikely to hold an administrative position. Of the 1,492 women in the sample, 77, or 5.1%, are chairpersons. Interestingly, Stead (1975) found a similar dearth of women in administrative positions in her management sample, but discovered that the women surveyed held strong beliefs in their own administrative abilities. Of the self-concept dimensions which Stead tested, this belief in administrative capacity was in fact the most positive, more so than, for example, belief in abi- lity to publish in scholarly journals or to generate consulting opportunities. Ob- servation of college~ " ' ~,niversities tends to bear out the fact that few women are in administrative positions.

Primary Teaching Area. The primary teaching area that has most attracted women proves to be business education, a category which includes "office ad- ministration" and "secretarial sciences" (see Table II). In addition, the highest degree of 27.5% of the women is in the field of business education. It appears that the percentages do not reflect what has occurred more recently in women's choice of teaching area. It is expected that most of those teaching business education have been doing so for a number of years; this expectation is confirmed by examination of the data on year o f highest degree earned.

Highest Degree Earned. Of the women, 44.6% hold doctoral degrees; 52.4% list law or master's degrees as their highest degree earned, and 3% received only an undergraduate degree.

Recency of Phenomenon. There is a decided trend for the women to have recently embarked on their careers as business school academicians; 34.4% of the women entered their present position in either 1974 or 1975. Also, nearly half of the women received their highest degree between 1970 and 1975. It is then not surprising to find that many of the women (43%) had no prior academic

Table II. Primary Teaching Area of Women Business School Academicians

Primary teaching area Women academicians

Accounting 16.7% Marketing 6.6% Quantitative methods 7.5% Finance 4.3% Economics 10.7% Management 12.1% Business education 34.9% Other 7.0%


position; 51.4% began their academic careers as instructors. Most of those in the sample (64.9%) also had no prior management experience.

Because of this trend toward recency of appointment among the women professors, the data were dichotomized between those who received their highest degree before 1970 (54.1%) and those whose degree was obtained in or after 1970 (45.9%). Questions about systematic differences between the two groups in both individual and school characteristics were raised; 1970 was chosen as the cutoff year because the 1970s brought increased opportunities for women in higher education (Bernard, 1964).

It was hypothesized that women receiving their highest degree in or after 1970 would be more likely to hold a doctoral degree than their predecessors. This proved to be the case. Of those holding a doctorate, 47.8% received the degree before 1970 and 52.2% in 1970 or after. A constricted academic labor market made the doctoral degree more mandatory as a credential for college teaching than was true prior to the 1970s. Also, the doctorate increases one's likelihood of entering the tenure track of a college or university faculty. The fact that women business school professors are increasingly obtaining this credential should assure them greater opportunity in competing for tenure.

It was further hypothesized that of the women whose primary teaching area is business education, the percentage of the sample would be high for those receiving degrees before 1970. Again, this hypothesis is confirmed (see Table III). Finance and economics also experienced a slight drop in the 1970s, while the percentages of women teaching marketing and quantitative methods have increased (see Table III).

Women who received their degrees in or after 1970 were expected to have less management experience than those with earlier degrees. Those with recent degrees would seem to simply have had less time in which to have held a job in industry. However, among those receiving the degree after 1970, there is actually a slight increase in the percentage who had prior management experience. A similar finding occurs on the number of publications and affiliations (with professional organizations) reported: The women who received the degree later (and thus are for the most part younger) have published more and joined more organizations.

Table III. Recency of Degree and Primary Teaching Area

Year of highest degree

Primary teaching area Before 1970 1970 and after

Marketing 41.2% 58.8% Quantitative methods 39.8% 60.2% Finance 61.5% 38.5% Economics 57.0% 43.0% Business education 64.8% 32.2%

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These findings suggest that the women who have become business school professors during the 1970s are generally better prepared and qualified than those who have been teaching longer. This seemingly contradicts the conven- tional notion that the earlier women had to be exceptional in order to compete with men in highly discriminatory times. The present findings probably include a mixture of such older exceptional women with other older women who taught in schools and subjects where credentialing requirements were low. Many of those low-level teaching positions no longer exist in today's business school.

As a final test of the hypothesis of the association of recency of degree and qualification, characteristics of women who received their highest degree in 1974 and 1975 were examined. In this group more than three-quarters of the women hold doctorate degrees, cite at least one publication, and belong to at least one professional organization.

It was further hypothesized that those in the 1970 and after group would be teaching in better schools than those in the earlier group. Three different indicators of academic excellence of the school were used: average freshman Scholastic Aptitude Test scores, student faculty ratio, and percentage of the faculty holding Ph.D. degrees. For all three indicators, the results are similar. Women who received their highest degree in or after 1970 are slightly (but not significantly) more likely to be teaching in better schools than women with earlier degrees. Also, women receiving their degrees in the 1970s are somewhat more likely to be teaching in larger schools (as measured by student enrollment, number of volumes in the library, and whether the institution grants a doctorate). Looking at the 1974 and 1975 women makes the trend even more apparent, though the differences again are not statistically significant.

Similarly, it was believed that women who obtained their highest degree in or after 1970 would be more likely to teach in a school which has a better balance among the overall faculty between men and women. This expectation was confirmed, but again the redistribution is minimal. It was hypothesized that women business school faculty members might at one time have been dele- gated to positions in schools with predominantly female faculties in all areas, but this does not appear to have even been the case.

Profile of the Woman Business School Marketing Academician

Rank. Among the 92 women (6% of the total sample) who list marketing as their primary teaching area, the distribution according to rank is very similar to that of the entire sample. Again, few marketing women hold administrative positions. However, the contrast between these women and the marketing men matched by year of highest degree is marked. The ranks of the men in marketing are distributed in an inverse pyramid (see Table IV). Also, the administrative positions held by the men are more numerous; 19 of the men and 9 of the women are currently administrators.


Table IV. Rank of Female and Male Market- ing Academicians

Rank Females Males

Professor 27.4% 26.4% Associate professor 3.2% 27:5% Assistant professor 25.3% 34.1% Lecturer or instructor 41.3% 12.5% Visiting professor 1.1% 0.0%

Undoubtedly, most of these differences can be explained by what is the most striking contrast of all - the differences in the percentage holding doctorates. Among the marketing women, 57.7% hold doctorates (in contrast to 44% of the overall female sample); but among the men in marketing, 85.7% have obtained a doctorate (see Table V). Certainly, the lack of a doctorate can explain why either a man or woman would fail to reach a high ranking or administrative posit ion in the college or university. In fact when the ranks of the marketing professors holding doctorates are compared in Table VI, many of the male-female differences of Table IV are erased. The holding of a doctorate could a l sobe expected to have an impact on the number o f one's publications, which in turn will have an impact on one's posit ion and potential for promotion. It is assumed that a person with a doctorate has had more experience in empirical research than someone with a lower degree, and thus has more inclination to continue to engage in research which will then be publishable. On this basis, then, the differences in publications among the men and women marketing faculty members are to be expected (see Table VII).

However, other variables can be expected to be unaffected by highest degree held. For example, it was hypothesized that the women teaching-marketing would be less likely to hold their highest degree (at whatever level) in marketing than would the male marketing faculty members. This hypothesis is aligned with the experiences of many women who demonstrate that women are more likely to enter the business world via a circuitous route. For example, women are more likely to hold a liberal arts degree in art history than the men going into business, who are more likely to be studying economics. If this is true for women entering

Table V. Highest Degree Held by Female and Male Marketing Academicians

Highest degree Females Males

Doctorate 57.7% 85.7% Master's 41.3% 14.3% Bachelor's or associate 1.0% 0.0%

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Table VI. Rank of Female and Male Market- ing Academicians Holding Doctorates

Rank Females Males

Professor 26.4% 30.0% Associate professor 35.9% 28.6% Assistant professor 28.3% 38.6% Lecturer or instructor 7.5% 2.8% Visiting professor 1.9% 0.0%

the business world, it may also be true among women business school faculty members. In fact, this phenomenon may apply to other professions traditionally closed to females. Exceptionally bright women may be able to break into these fields somewhat later than the men do and with more varied backgrounds. This expectation is slightly confirmed for those in the present marketing sample. Among the women, 57.3% received their highest degree in marketing, 24% in management, and the remainder in either the behavioral sciences or economics. Of the men teaching marketing, 71.4% received their highest degree in that area, 17.6% in management, and the remainder in various other subject areas.

One other variable seems to be largely unaffected by whether or not one holds a doctorate: the number of prior management positions that one has held. Thus, in the matched sample, the patterns of the men's and women's backgrounds should be quite similar. However, the data reveal that the men are more likely to have had more of these experiences (see Table VIII). One interpretation is that women may have had less time for their careers because of family respon- sibilities. Thus, they are more likely to have had an interrupted career pattern. It is also possible that women have not been able to enter industry as readily as the men have, and this may account for the difference.

The differences between the percentages of marketing men and women holding doctorates suggests the necessity for comparing men and women who are matched not only by year of degree but also by highest degree held. With this analysis, contrasts in rank become less startling. This approach also demonstrates that women who are lecturers do not hold doctorates, whereas those with tenure track appointments do.

Table VII. Number of Works Published by Female and Male M~keting Acade-

micians

Works published Females Males

0 46.4% 31.9% 1 12.4% 6.6% 2 10.3% 12.1% 3 or more 30.9% 49.5%


Table VIII. Number of Prior Management Positions of Female and Male Marketing

Academicians

Prior positions Females Males

0 62.9% 45.1% 1 15.5% 26.4% 2 13.4% 16.5% 3 or more 8.2% 12.1%

IMPLICATIONS: SKEWED RATIOS

Women business school professors are widely scattered throughout the na- tion's business schools. The 1,492 women in the sample are teaching at 456 different colleges and universities. This means that a woman in the sample is unlikely to have more than one or two female colleagues. In fact, the majority of the schools (59%) have less than 10% women on their business school faculties; 25% of the Schools have from 11% to 20% females; 10% from 21% to 30% females; 3% from 31% to 40% females; and 3% over 41% females. Clearly, most of these women are working in schools where the majority of the faculty members are male. Statistics on the percentage of women in individual departments are not available. However, a woman business school professor's department is still more likely to be comprised predominantly of males.

These ratios suggest a number o f issues which may be salient to women business school faculty members. Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1977)has convincing- ly argued that imbalance in the ratios between males and females in any work group will result in predictable outcomes for the status o f the group which is underrepresented. Kanter describes skewed groups as those "in which there is a large preponderance o f one type over another, up to a ratio o f perhaps 85.15" (p. 208). "Tilted" groups have less extreme distributions and less exaggerated effects. In the skewed group the minority people can be called tokens because they are so often treated as representatives o f their category rather than as indi- viduals (Kanter, 1977).

Tokens are highly visible, often feeling the pressures of exposure. At the same time, they are isolated and may have difficulty learning exactly what is required in their role. As graduate students, women academics are afforded am- ple opportunity to anticipate their future classroom roles; however, they are not privy to the mechanics of department functioning, such as allotment o f teaching schedules. Nor are they likely to have observed informal network processes at work in passing along consulting opportunities or establishing collaborative research arrangements.

The pressure of visibility means that a woman professor may be especially reluctant to take risks. It is not so much that she was not conditioned in her up-

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bringing to take risks, but that her token status enhances her vulnerability to the consequences o f failure. Visibility pressures also make women consciously avoid aligning themselves with other women.

Kanter (1977) suggests that very different group dynamics occur when the sex ratio of a group changes, so that a woman is no longer a token and becomes a minority member. Thus, as the numbers of women business school professors increase, the problems associated with token status will be alleviated. It is interesting to note that among the schools in the sample, the percentage of women business school professors in the school is in no way related to their rank. One might hypothesize, following Kanter's argument, that women in schools with greater proportions of women would have achieved higher positions; in fact, the distribution of rank is very similar throughout various male-female ratios, with the major concentration of the women in an assistant professor position.

IMPACT OF WOMEN BUSINESS SCHOOL ACADEMICIANS

Interest in the topic of women who are business school faculty members was originally generated by the increasing percentages of women currently en- rolled in business schools. As part of the present research effort, a small scale exploratory survey of United States business schools was conducted; 30 schools replied to the questionnaire. From the returns it was evident that the current male-female ratio in enrollment figures is shifting. At the same time, few schools include within their curriculum or student services specific programs which ad- dress the distinctive needs of women in management training. The schools surveyed range from 13% to 45% female in student enrollments; these schools have experienced a tremendous jump in the number of both female applicants and matriculants in the past several years.

On Curriculum

Few of the schools surveyed offer a course within the business school curriculum which deals specifically with women. A more common practice is the development of a course or courses on women as part of a separate women's studies or student-regulated curriculum. In addition, continuing education programs have recognized the existence of an educational market among women who presently hold or aspire to managerial positions and who wish to enhance their management skills.

Finally, some schools are placing increased emphasis on the topic of women and work within the framework of their existing courses. For example, one of the schools surveyed has developed the topic of sex roles in business into a


module and has incorporated it into an ongoing management course in organizational behavior.

The dean of one leading business school replied to the survey by declaring that, at his school, the 13% of the MBA students who are women are "doing so well that I see no need for any course which focuses on women." It is reasoned that if a course offering is attractive only to women students, then women are likely to become more separate from the mainstream of management education and the business world. For example, many business educators feel that women in business lack knowledge about the "political processes" existent in organizations (see Hennig & Jardim, 1977). A course which addresses that issue, but separates the participants from the equally acknowledged "political processes" of the MBA program, would be futile. This point is perhaps most dramatically illustrated by the ineffectiveness and eventual dissolution of many of the Black studies courses initiated in the 1960s.

Many curriculum decisions are left to the discretion of the professor teaching the course. Increasing numbers of women business school faculty members should mean an increased emphasis on women's topics in the business school curriculum. Certainly, there are also many male professors who include these topics in their courses, but much of the leadership in doing so at the schools surveyed has come from the women professors.

On Female Students

Two aspects of the role of the female business school academician may be especially important for women management students that of the mentor and that of the role model. Ironically, by the time that substantial numbers of faculty members are knowledgeable about and willing to discuss women in their courses, and to serve as role models and mentors, there will undoubtedly not be the great need that exists today for such discussion.

A great deal o f recent attention has focused on the importance of a mentor for the success of the young or new person in any organization. For example, Gail Sheehy (1976) has emphasized the necessity for the ambitious businesswoman to have a mentor who can guide her through the intricacies in- volved in climbing the corporate ladder. Similarly, Lyle and Ross (1973) conducted a study of male and female managerial styles in various industries and across several levels within those industries. These investigators discovered that women were twice as likely to rely on a mentor for advice and assistance in pur- suing their career goals. Evidently, a woman's role as a manager is so ill defined within the current corporate world that she may be forced to find a mentor to (1) help cue her as to what is expected of her and (2) provide career opportunities which may ordinarily be unavailable or of limited accessibility to women.

The need for role models is evident from the research stemming from Matina Homer's classic exposure o f the "fear of success" in women. Homer

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(1972) found that some very bright women will avoid success because success is perceived to override femininity; success and femininity are viewed as in- compatible. A more recent study by Johnston (1974) illustrates Homer's concept for the female MBA graduate. Johnston surveyed these graduates, asking them to rate the importance of a number of items representing possible problem areas peculiar to women in management positions. Of the 21 items listed, the highest rating was given to the statement, "Women need higher goals; they tend to sell themselves short" (Johnston, 1974).

Implicit throughout this discussion is the need not only for more female business faculty members but also for well-qualified women to fill these faculty positions. Women whose qualifications do not match those of their male colleagues only serve to reinforce the stereotype of women as misfits in the "male" world of business and finance. Women professors who act as advisers to students need to have had management and consulting experiences similar to those of the men professors. Otherwise, students, who can be extremely politically astute, will not seek out women faculty members for career advice.

CONCLUSION

The dichotomization of the female sample by year of highest degree indi- cates that women with more recent degrees are likely to be better prepared faculty members than those with earlier degrees. This decided trend of better prepared and more productive women professors means that many of the large concentration o f women who are presently assistant professors should eventually become associate and full professors.

Present ratios of males and females on business school faculties suggest that women face problems of visibility and uncertainty about role definition. Small numbers of women business school professors usually mean little emphasis on women's issues in business school training and a lack of mentors and role models for the increasing percentages of young women attending business school. Both male and female students are currently exposed to few women business faculty members. As more women attend graduate business schools and receive doctorates in business, changes will occur. The amount and the rapid- ity of these changes remain in doubt.

REFERENCES

Bernard, J. Academic women. New York: Meridian Books, 1964. Fulton, O. Rewards and fairness: Academic women in the United States. In M. R. Trow

(Ed.), Teachers and students. New York: McGraw-Hi/l, 1975. Henning, M., & Jardim, A. The managerial woman. New York: Doubleday, 1977.


Horner, M. S. Toward an understanding of achievement-related conflicts in women. Journal o f Sociallssues, 1972, 28(2), 157-175.

Johnston, M. J. A survey o f women MBA graduates in management positions. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Pittsburgh, 1974.

Kanter, R. M. Men and women o f the corporation. New York: Basic Books, 1977. Lyle, J. R., & Ross, J. L. Women in industry: Employment patterns o f women in corporate

America. Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973. Sheehy, G. The mentor connection: The secret link to the successful woman's life. New

York, April 5, 1976, pp. 33-39. Stead, B. A. Women management faculty: An empirical look at their status. Report from

the Committee on the Status of Women in the Management Profession, Academy of Management, Houston, 1975.

Documents

Women business school academicians: Disparities and progress