COU NCI L O F ECO NO MIC ADVI S ER S IS SU E BRI EF

AU G UST 2015

EXPANDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WOMEN IN BUSINESS

Over the last five decades, women have made enormous 

strides in the U.S. labor market. Our economy is $2.0 

trillion, or 13.5 percent, larger than it would have been 

without women’s increased participation in the labor 

force and hours worked since 1970. Meanwhile, the 

additional dollars brought in by women over the same 

period accounted for the vast majority of the increase in 

family income since 1970. Women’s increased 

experience and education have contributed to their 

increased earnings: their college graduation rates have 

outpaced those of men for several decades now and they 

have narrowed gaps in work experience. In the next year 

or two, women will make up the majority of the collegeeducated workforce in the United States for the first 

time, and today make up the majority of college 

students. 

An increased role for women is good news for our 

economy because research has shown that greater 

diversity in the workforce increases productivity, 

improves decision making, and heightens performance. 

More diverse employees also better enable firms to 

target a more diverse set of consumers. Businesses with 

employees who understand the perspectives and goals 

of a larger range of consumers will better be able to 

target products and services to consumers and will be 

more likely to be aware of the needs of minority and 

female consumers. Research bears out the business case 

for gender diversity: companies in the top quartile of 

gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have 

above-typical financial returns.

These shifts in our workforce have been driven in part by 

changes in our family lives, as relationships within

households have shifted with many opposite and samesex couples equally sharing work and family 

responsibilities. As a result, both men and women are 

seeking to fulfill roles as both wage earners and 

caregivers. These changes have implications for who is in 

the labor force and what these workers need to be 

successful in both their work and personal lives. Today 

most caregivers are workers and have important 

demands on their time outside of work.

To thrive, businesses across many sectors will need to 

adapt to recognize the needs of their workers to 

effectively balance their work and other responsibilities. 

Meeting the needs of the changing American workforce 

is an essential ingredient in worker productivity, 

attraction, and retention. For example, over half of 

workers said that they could do their job better if they 

were given more flexibility, and nearly half of parents say 

they have turned down a job because it would conflict 

too much with their families’ needs. 

Studies have found that companies with more women on 

their boards tend to outperform companies with fewer 

women at the executive level. But although women have 

become more equal players in the labor market overall 

and have increasingly entered previously maledominated occupations like medicine and law, women 

have made relatively fewer strides in business careers. In

2014, only 4.8 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 companies 

were female, and in 2013 only 16.9 percent of board 

seats in the Fortune 500 were held by women. This is due 

in part to the persistence of barriers for women in 

business that exist at each step of a woman’s path to a 

business career, leading to the loss of women from 

business careers at each step. These barriers include 

explicit and implicit bias, inadequate preparation and 

support from business educators, and a lack of adequate 

family-friendly workplace policies including, among 

other things. 

This CEA Issue Brief highlights these unique barriers for 

women entering business careers and considers how 

businesses and business educators can combat them. 

Diversity is a key ingredient for success for any business 

and for the overall economy. Business educators and 

workplaces must work together to reduce barriers for 

women and minorities in order to fully reap the benefits 

of diversity, maximize innovation, and boost 

productivity. 

Setting Aspirations: High School, College, and 

Early Career

From a young age, girls are less likely than boys to 

envision themselves as businesspeople. For instance, a 
2

2007 study of high school students and a 2013 survey of 

college-aged students both showed that females were 

much less likely than males to say they wanted to own a 

business someday. 

Girls are also less confident in their entrepreneurial and 

business abilities and knowledge. A survey of youth ages 

14-19 found that girls were significantly less likely than 

boys to give themselves high ratings on their knowledge 

of starting a business and were less likely to be interested 

in starting a business. These differences are typically 

unrelated to actual skill differences. For example, the 

OECD found that even high-skilled girls lack confidence 

in their math and science skills. A 2002 study of teens in 

grades 7 through 12 found that teenage girls were less 

confident in their ability to work with numbers than boys 

and that girls were only 60 percent as likely as teenage 

boys to list business as their first career choice. Many of 

the girls surveyed referred to business as constraining, 

boring, or stressful, and many stated that it was a maledominated career. Along similar lines, boys were nearly 

70 percent more likely than girls to say they wanted to 

be in charge of other people and 65 percent more likely 

to say they wanted to be their own boss.

These attitudes become entrenched early in life because 

of the different expectations society has of girls versus 

boys. Research has documented environmental factors 

that affect early childhood differences in confidence and 

career aspirations. For instance, girls who show 

leadership ability or who assert themselves may be more 

likely to be referred to pejoratively as bossy: a 2008 

survey by the Girl Scout Research Institute found that 29 

percent of girls, twice as many as boys, did not want to 

be leaders because they did not want to “seem bossy.” 

Moreover, parents also underrate girls’ math abilities, 

views which may affect perceptions of their suitability for 

a business career, and that shape their expectations and 

interactions with children and young adults. Gendered 

assumptions about typical occupational choices for men 

and women can be found throughout children’s books. 

These expectations and representations affect girls’ selfimage: reminding girls of their gender when presenting 

themselves with traditionally male-dominated activities 

can negatively impact their performance, a phenomenon 

known as “stereotype threat.” Unfortunately, the 

textbooks that prepare teachers to work with students 

inadequately address resources and strategies to combat 

gender bias in the classroom. 

These differences in expectations and norms for girls and 

boys creates differences in performance as well. When 

communities hold more traditional beliefs about gender, 

students perform academically in more “gender-typical” 

ways, with girls outperforming boys in reading and boys 

outperforming girls in math and science. The most 

gender-equal regions in the United States have gender 

gaps in math and science that are roughly 50 percent 

lower than the average gap for the Nation. This is one 

reason that efforts to increase female leadership and 

confidence in the classroom, such as the “ban bossy” 

campaign, can be effective in increasing both girls’ 

interest and their performance.

Other social and educational forces can also help combat 

these attitudes. Girls with parents in business are more 

likely to be interested in business, suggesting that early 

exposure to business as a career can partially prevent 

these beliefs from forming. Beyond this family 

relationship, outreach efforts do appear to generate 

interest in business among girls. For instance, girls who 

participate in leadership roles in outside activities are 

more likely to express interest suggesting that more 

opportunities to participate in such activities may help 

foster girls’ business interest. Girls with higher selfassessed levels of skills in numeracy, speaking, and 

writing are also more interested in business careers. 

Research suggests that the socialization that leads to 

women’s lesser interest in business is apparent as early 

as middle school and that attempts to combat this 

phenomenon through tailored education may need to 

start in grade school. 

Despite the gap in career aspirations, women are now 

nearly as likely as men to receive an undergraduate 

degree in a business field (including general business, 

marketing, and management): in 2013, 48 percent of 

undergraduate business degrees at U.S. institutions were 

awarded to women. However, this is down slightly from 

the mid-2000s, when a majority of undergraduate 

business degrees were awarded to women. Women’s 

near-parity in undergraduate business degrees has been 

the case since the mid-1980s, following a sharp increase 

over the course of the 1970s and the early 1980s (going 

from just 9 percent in 1971 to 46 percent in 1986). 

However, since 1990 women’s enrollment in college has 

outpaced that of men while their enrollment in business 

degrees has stagnated and even declined somewhat: in 

2013, women received 57 percent of all bachelor’s 

degrees, but just 48 percent of undergraduate degrees in 
3

business. 1 Undergraduate women are currently about 30 

percent less likely than male undergraduates to major in 

business: undergraduate business degrees made up 16.4 

percent of all bachelor’s degrees awarded to women in 

2012-2013, a decline from 18.4 percent in 2000-2001. 

For men, this share fell by less, from 24.9 to 23.9, over 

this period.2

Within undergraduate business majors there are gender 

differences in the areas of focus within their major. A 

2014 UCLA survey of college freshmen shows large 

gender gaps in students’ intention to major in subjects 

like finance, which tend to be higher-paying, while 

women are more likely to focus on tourism and 

hospitality. This differential focus of area choice leads to 

wage gaps for men and women from the start of their 

careers; the expected early career salary for finance is 

over 40 percent higher than the expected early career 

salary for hospitality and tourism.

Women in Graduate Business Education

Further gaps in business careers emerge after

graduation. Immediately after college, young women are 

less likely than young men to go into business 

occupations, both at the management and nonmanagement levels. Of all students who graduated in 

2008, overall 24 percent of employed men were 

 

1 U.S Department of Education, National Center for 

Education Statistics. 2014. Digest of Education Statistics

Table 325.25; CEA calculations.

2 National Center for Education Statistics, Department of 

Education. 2014. Digest of Education Statistics Tables 

322.20 and 325.25; CEA calculations.

employed in business occupations as their primary 

occupation four years out of college, compared to 19 

percent of employed women.3 These gaps affect the 

desire to pursue business education. Among young men 

and women employed in business, an equal fraction 

(about two-thirds) have a desire to pursue a higher 

degree. Moreover, the gap in work experience in 

business occupations likely creates gender differences in 

the pool of students potentially applying to graduate 

school in business. 

Graduate programs in business have expanded rapidly in 

the United States over the past forty years. Between 

1971 and 2013, the number of business degrees (both 

master’s and doctoral) conferred by U.S. institutions 

grew at an average rate of 4.8 percent per year, nearly 

twice the rate of non-business postsecondary degrees. 

Over the same time period, women’s participation in 

graduate business education expanded even more 

rapidly. In 1971, slightly over 1,000 master’s and doctoral 

degrees in business were conferred on women by U.S. 

institutions – just 3.9 percent of the total number of such 

degrees. Between 1971 and 2013, however, this number 

grew at an average rate of 11.1 percent per year, such 

that by 2013 women earned nearly 90,000 graduate 

business degrees in the United States, 46 percent of the 

U.S. total. 

However, these figures include all degrees in business, 

including specialized master’s degrees in management 

and marketing, which tend to have higher shares of 

women than traditional MBAs. In a 2013-14 study, the 

Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business, a 

global accreditation organization for business schools, 

found that among specialized master’s degree programs 

offered by business schools, men and women were 

enrolled at essentially equal rates, contributing to the 

overall share of 46 percent of all degrees discussed 

above. Thus, while women have made rapid strides in 

graduate business education over the past forty years, 

gaps persist in the number of women and men who 

receive business degrees, particularly MBA degrees. 

While comprehensive data on MBA programs is limited, 

3 U.S. Department of Education, National Center for 

Education Statistics, 2008/12 Baccalaureate and Beyond 

Longitudinal Study (B&B:08/12); tabulations from 

PowerStats. 
4

the data that are available paint a picture of sharp 

disparities in enrollment between men and women. 

Enrollment in North American MBA programs is sharply 

skewed towards men: among the 338 schools reporting 

data, only 38 percent of students in full-time MBA 

programs were female. 

The disparity in male and female enrollment is even 

larger among elite business schools. Among the top 

twenty business schools ranked by U.S. News and World 

Report in 2015, only 35 percent of full-time students 

were women.4

Enrollment is likely not the only factor affecting 

disparities in graduate degrees: women enrolled in MBA 

programs are less likely than their male peers to finish 

their degrees. While recent data on this issue are scant, 

a study using a multistage survey of around 5,000 

individuals who registered for the GMAT in 1990 and 

1991, estimated that the women were between 24 and 

55 percent less likely than the men to complete a 

master’s degree in business (depending on the type of 

degree). A 2013 study found that women continue to 

complete MBAs at lower rates than men. 

Factors Affecting Women and Graduate 

Degrees in Business

Case studies have identified a number of potential 

causes for disparities in both enrollment and completion 

in business schools. For example, the Pew Research 

Center found that half of respondents in a 2008 survey

cited the “old-boy network” as a major reason for the 

lack of women in top executive positions (and another 

quarter cited it as a minor reason). One-third of male 

corporate directors in a 2010 survey cited women’s 

weaker networks, due to the persistence of existing 

networks among men, as a major factor in women’s 

limited access to and acceptance on corporate boards. 

Additionally, the relative lack of career advancement 

options for women in business may serve as a deterrent 

for young women considering their career options. 

Among Harvard Business School alumni working fulltime, men were more likely to be satisfied with their 

opportunities for career growth and development and 

were more likely to be given high-level responsibilities 

 

4 CEA calculations based on data presented in U.S. News 

and World Report, “Best Business Schools 2015.”

such as direct reports, profit-and-loss responsibility, and 

positions in senior management.

Beliefs Regarding Business School as a Good Match 

Women have also been found to have lower confidence 

regarding math skills—consistent with the lower levels of 

confidence in numeracy skills among girls. Since business 

careers are often associated with math skills, that lack of 

confidence may affect women’s willingness to go into 

business. Similarly, stereotype threat, where individuals 

fear confirming a negative belief about their group, may

also be undermining women’s willingness to go into 

business programs and careers. For instance, when 

women are reminded of their gender, they perform 

worse on tests involving math. There are a number of 

ways for schools to minimize stereotype threat, including 

creating an identity-safe environment, in which teachers 

strive to ensure students that their social identities are 

assets rather than barriers to success, and getting more 

girls into the classroom to create positive peer effects.

Another contribution to differing enrollment in business 

schools and pursuit of business careers may be women’s 

beliefs about the match between their own ethics and 

their perceptions of the ethics required to be successful 

in business careers. One study found that women were 

more likely to associate business with immorality than 

men, and that they were also more likely to react 

negatively to jobs that required a trade-off between 

ethics and careers. Gender differences in ethical 

standards also affect negotiations, which in turn may 

impact women’s opportunities and experiences at work. 

Research has shown that the ethical issues in business 

education may be playing a role in turning women away 

from MBA programs. Women’s disproportionate

exposure to deception in negotiations may also 

contribute to this aversion to the ethics of business.

Experiences at Business School

Other challenges are apparent when one digs into the 

business school experience itself. For instance, women 

are substantially less likely to be featured in the case 

studies that form the basis of classroom discussion. A 

review of case studies in one leading business journal 

found that women were absent in close to half and were 
5

the protagonist in just 13 percent. When women are 

protagonists they are mostly involved in “pink” topics, 

including food, family, fashion, and gender-specific 

issues such as women’s health. Of the seven cases among 

the 53 that are best-sellers and award-winners and also 

feature women, six of them deal with traditionally 

female areas.

Women may also be reluctant to take classes that are 

less traditional for women: research on graduates of one 

top MBA program found that women are less likely to 

take finance and accounting classes but are more likely 

to take classes in marketing, a finding that matches other 

research discussed earlier on both undergraduate and 

graduate interests within business education. They also 

find that women have slightly lower GPAs across all 

courses of study, with finance classes having the largest 

gender gap in grades. A recent case study of one top 

business school suggests that lower grades among 

women may be due in part to subjective measures such 

as classroom participation.

Multiple studies over several decades have found that 

women are less likely to engage fully in competitive case 

discussions that make up a large portion of business 

school classroom practices. At the same time, implicit 

bias among teachers may favor men in subjects like 

math, which are traditionally associated with male 

success. As with differences seen in studies related to 

gender differences in math and science and the potential 

impact of stereotype threat on performance, some of 

these differences in performance may be caused by 

gendered beliefs about women’s ability to succeed in 

finance and the overall gender attitudes that shape 

campus culture.

Meanwhile, a lack of female mentors and role models 

within business schools may both discourage enrollment 

and hamper completion for women students. Data from 

the AACSB show that women are underrepresented in 

nearly every faculty rank and discipline in U.S. business 

schools. Women are also much more likely to be 

concentrated in lower-ranking faculty positions in 

business schools. For example, among general business 

faculty, only 14 percent of full professors are women, 

 

5 CEA calculations based on data presented in U.S. News 

and World Report, “Best Business Schools 2015.”

6 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study 2012; 

tabulations from PowerStats.

while 42 percent of instructors are female. These gaps 

are even larger in the leadership of top business schools: 

of the top sixty business schools ranked by U.S. News and 

World Report in 2015, just 11 (18 percent) have a female 

dean. Among the top twenty schools, only three (15 

percent) have a female dean.5

Gender balance within professions can create important 

opportunities for women to mentor women. According 

to a multi-occupation survey study, female mentees find 

mentor relationships more productive when mentors are 

female. Mentoring and role model effects are also 

relevant in the college classroom, where female 

professors can improve the performance and persistence 

of women in STEM fields. Similarly, mentoring by female 

professors has also increased the success and 

productivity of female assistant professors in Economics.

Business School Timing

The usual timing of enrollment in traditional MBA 

programs may be another barrier, as the median MBA 

student age of 30 lines up closely with the typical age of 

first birth for college-educated women in the United 

States.6 This means that women who want to have 

children may face a trade-off between pursuing graduate 

education in business and having children on their 

preferred timeline. Indeed, women pursuing 

professional degrees have had the sharpest increase in 

age of first birth in recent years: from 25 in 1992 to 34 in 

2012.7 The increasing age of first birth among women 

with graduate degrees highlights the very real trade-offs 

women are facing. For many women who choose to have 

children, this may result in women choosing not to 

pursue graduate education in business given the tradeoffs that come with postponing childbirth into one’s midto-late 30s and 40s.

7 Bureau of Labor Statistics, Current Population Survey 

(Fertility and Marital History Supplement, 2012); CEA 

calculations. Data are three-year moving averages.
6

Enhancing the Careers and Opportunities of 

Women in Business

Women are underrepresented in the highest ranks of 

business, and compensation and leadership disparities 

that emerge several years after graduation grow sharply 

over time. For instance, women see gaps in leadership: 

as of 2014, only 4.8 percent of CEOs at Fortune 500 

companies were female and only 16.9 percent of board 

seats at Fortune 500 companies were held by women. 

Studies have shown that MBA women may be subject to 

implicit or explicit gender discrimination, especially from 

male colleagues, that may hold them back from 

promotion; this may also keep the number of female 

sponsors and mentors at the highest levels of business 

low, reducing the likelihood of career-boosting 

mentorship for women on lower rungs. Survey estimates

also find that women identify with female role models 

who frequently hold lower level positions, often 

tempering their ultimate career expectations.

Similarly, research examined the salaries of MBA 

graduates from a top business school and found that 

although men and women had fairly similar earnings at 

graduation, after 5 years, men earned approximately 30 

percent more than women, and, after 10 or more years, 

this gap stretched to 60 percent. 

Career Interruptions, Parenthood, and Work-Family 

Conflict

The research documenting the experience of one MBA 

program finds that the primary differences between men 

and women came from the likelihood and length of 

career interruptions as well as differences in weekly 

hours worked, with much less explained by differences in 

preparation (e.g. finance courses). Deviations from the 

corporate norm of non-interruption and long hours are 

harshly punished in terms of earnings. This is especially 

true if a woman chooses to have children; the presence 

of children is the largest contributor to these gender 

differences. The authors found that much of the growth 

in the earnings gap in the first decade was due to women 

being more likely to take time away from work – closely 

associated with childbirth and child care needs (10 or 

more years out, there is a 22 percentage point gender 

gap in having taken time out of work including parental 

leave) – and the gender gap in hours with women more 

likely to work shorter hours including part-time 

employment – also typically related to family and 

caregiving responsibilities. 

Earnings gaps between men and women with MBAs are 

exacerbated because men continue to experience pay 

increases when they have children. Economists have 

suggested that these different experiences reflect 

household decisions about specialization. Women with 

children work fewer hours and are more likely to take 

parental leave than men with children. The penalty for 

time out of the labor force, in the form of lost wages, is 

larger for women in business than in almost any other 

profession; they do not simply lose the wages they would 
7

have received had they been at work, but in addition 

their entire earnings trajectory for the rest of their career 

is negatively affected. Because women 

disproportionately take time out of the labor force, this 

penalty disproportionately affects women. Other studies

have also documented this parenthood penalty and its 

disparate impact on mothers. 

Notably, career interruptions are non-linearly related to 

earnings in a number of occupations, particularly 

business, so workers who take time off lose more than 

just the foregone earnings during the period away from 

work—they continue to lose earnings for the rest of their 

careers. Research found that a 10 percent hiatus in 

employment for MBAs 15 years post-college (18 months 

off) was associated with a decrease in earnings of 41 

percent—much higher than the equivalent penalties in 

law (29 percent) and medicine (15 percent). The author 

also found that MBAs tended to take the longest nonwork spells after a birth compared to other highly 

educated women, such as physicians, PhDs, and lawyers. 

This suggests that those with the greatest penalties to 

time off were more likely to take extra time off, since 

their jobs do not facilitate regular forms of flexibility that 

allow parents to balance work and child care, such as 

shorter hours or more flexible scheduling. When there is 

very little workplace flexibility, an expectation for a 

workweek well above 40 hours, and high career penalties 

for taking even brief time off for maternity leave, some 

women, especially married women or those with 

another high earner in the household, may prefer to 

leave the workforce or engage in self-employment in 

response.

However, men in married couples are increasingly 

becoming more engaged in family life and parenting, and 

these parenthood penalties may begin to affect them as 

well. While women have become important contributors 

to family income, men have increasingly taken on child 

care responsibilities and other duties in the home. Today 

men are doing a larger share of household duties than in 

the past, though mothers still spend almost twice as 

much time on household work as fathers. Men are now 

increasingly looking for jobs with paternity leave: a 2014 

survey of high-skilled working fathers conducted by 

researchers at Boston College found that 89 percent said 

that the availability of paid paternity leave was an 

important consideration in seeking a new job if they 

planned to have another child. Likewise, 95 percent 

reported that workplace flexibility policies allowing them 

to actively engage with their children were an important 

job characteristic. Because many couples are increasingly

splitting home and workplace responsibilities more 

evenly, a majority of children are now in households 

where all parents work, and a majority of unpaid 

caregivers are also employed; it is more important than 

ever that workers are not penalized for balancing work 

with their family responsibilities. Moreover, women who 

are single parents may also face unique challenges in 

balancing work and family that create constraints in 

making career decisions.

Family-friendly workplace policies can better enable 

workers to choose jobs in which they will be most 

productive. For example, research shows that women 

are particularly likely to select careers that offer 

flexibility, like pharmacy or obstetrics, and less likely to 

enter careers known for inflexibility, such as business. 

Despite increasing workplace flexibility initiatives across 

sectors of the economy, women in management and 

business still view prioritizing family over work as an 

obstacle to success. 

Individual businesses and the economy as a whole 

benefit when workers are in jobs that are well-suited to 

their skills and qualifications. From a business’s 

perspective, these policies can also increase worker 

productivity and worker retention. For example, in a 

study of over 700 firms, well-managed firms were found 

to have both higher productivity and better work-life 

balance policies, and a survey of California employers 

found that 90 percent reported that paid leave did not 

harm productivity, profitability, turnover, or morale. Fair 

compensation for hours worked, access to workplace 

flexibility to shift either time or place of work, and 

advanced notice of work schedules can go a long way to 

making it easier for workers to balance their work and 

family responsibilities. These policies can not only help 

reduce the pay, promotion, and leadership gaps between 

men and women in business, but can also allow 

businesses to attract and retain the strongest talent, 

which benefits the economy as a whole.

Research also shows that family benefits like workplace 

flexibility and paid maternity leave have an important 

impact on women’s labor force participation. When 

women have access to paid maternity leave, a year later 

they work more and may have commensurately higher 

earnings. Research examining both maternity leave 
8

programs in other countries and in California concludes 

that paid leave can help new mothers maintain a 

connection to the labor force and increase the likelihood 

they return to their employer. Companies examining 

their own data have reported that expanding the length 

of maternity leave increased the retention of valuable 

employees. For example, Google has found that adding 

maternity leave decreased the rate by which new 

mothers left by 50 percent and Vodafone announced 

their new maternity leave policy along with the release

of analysis showing that paid maternity leave could save 

businesses money.

Negotiation: A Lose-Lose Situation

Even workers who do not have children face barriers in 

their careers, which contribute to a growing pay gap over 

time. There are many reasons for these gaps to grow 

over time, particularly because gaps tend to be 

accumulate over time with small differences growing as 

future promotions and raises exacerbate the differences. 

One issue related to both pay and promotion may be due 

to gender differences in the likelihood of initiating a 

negotiation.

Even highly-educated women tend to be less likely to 

negotiate their first job offer than men. But even when 

women do negotiate, if the norms of negotiation and 

salary expectations are not transparent, they are likely to 

receive less than men. While gaps in negotiated salaries 

are small in “low-structural ambiguity industries,” in 

“high structural ambiguity industries,” women received 

about $10,000, or 10 percent, less than similarlyqualified men.

Even though negotiation can lead to greater career 

prospects and higher wages, it can also be detrimental, 

particularly for women. Researchers found that women 

were more often penalized for initiating negotiations, 

since they are perceived differently from their male 

colleagues. Another study showed that female 

negotiators are perceived as more easily misled than 

male negotiators due to a perception of relatively low 

competence. As a result, negotiators deceived women 

more than men, leading women into more deals under 

false pretenses. Research finds that women are expected 

to be more altruistic than men, or support their 

coworkers more, to receive the same performance 

rating. This baseline expectation of altruism in women 

likely affects how women are perceived as negotiators 

relative to men.

Differences in compensation that arise due to 

differences in negotiation behavior may not be visible to 

women. Many workers are unaware of wage differences 

between themselves and coworkers. For example, a 

2010 survey found that 19 percent of employees 

reported their employer formally prohibits discussing 

salaries and another 31 percent are discouraged from 

discussing pay. A pay gap between men and women is 

particularly likely to exist under conditions of pay 

secrecy, where workers do not know whether they are 

receiving differential compensation from coworkers who 

have similar skills and experience levels. To remedy this 

situation, businesses can ensure that their workers are 

able to discuss compensation without fear of retaliation. 

Bias: Implicit and Explicit

Underlying all of the possible explanations for the gender 

pay gap is the potential for discrimination. A large and 

well-established literature has demonstrated the 

persistent negative effects of discrimination against 

women in hiring, promotion, and earnings. In addition, 

discrimination may not be overt: some work has 

suggested that implicit, or subconscious, biases are more 

common than overt biases; in this case, a pay gap 

stemming from discrimination will be more difficult to 

overcome.

Despite evidence that explicit discrimination is declining, 

in particular, that perceptions of women in managerial 

roles is improving, implicit bias against women, 

particularly those in leadership roles, may continue to 

hold back women’s career trajectories. Recent research

has found that men were more likely to associate traits 

linked to successful management (“competent,” 

“knowledgeable,” “leader”) with men, and to associate 

traits linked to unsuccessful management 

(“incompetent,” “ignorant,” “follower”) with women, 

even when scoring low on measures of explicit bias 

against women. 

New research shows that these implicit biases can have 

concrete effects on women’s success in the job market. 

In one study, male job interviewers who scored high on 

measures of implicit bias were more likely to give female 

interviewees negative performance evaluations. 

Moreover, interviewers who simultaneously scored high 
9

on implicit bias but low on explicit bias were the most 

likely to score female interviewees negatively, 

demonstrating the critical need to address both forms of 

bias in the workplace.

Women in Entrepreneurship

Finally, entrepreneurship and business ownership are 

also an important career avenue for business school 

graduates, and there are persistent gender gaps. In 2012, 

just 36 percent of business owners in the United States 

were women, and in 2007 only 29 percent of businesses 

were majority-owned by women. Moreover, businesses 

owned by women are substantially smaller on average 

than male-owned businesses. In 2007—the most recent 

year for which comprehensive data is available—88 

percent of businesses that were majority-owned by 

women were sole proprietorships. Less than 1 percent of 

all women-owned businesses had 100 or more 

employees, and 1.8 percent of women-owned 

businesses generated receipts of more than $1 million 

annually (compared to 1.6 percent and 6.3 percent 

respectively for men). Despite these gaps in 

entrepreneurship, gender diversity has been shown to 

increase the success of new companies: research by First 

Round Capital, a notable investor, found that startups 

with at least one female founder performed 63 percent 

better than all-male teams.

The small size of women-owned businesses may be due 

to credit constraints, as research has indicated that 

female entrepreneurs have less access to financial 

capital on average than do male entrepreneurs.A survey 

of firms by the National Women’s Business Council found 

that male entrepreneurs start out with nearly twice as 

much capital as women ($135,000 versus $75,000). 

Research by the Small Business Administration also finds 

that female entrepreneurs are more likely to use a 

different mix of debt capital and equity and depend more 

on owner equity investments than do male 

entrepreneurs.

Meanwhile, venture capital flows disproportionately to 

firms headed by men. Between 2011 and 2013, just 14 

percent of venture capital-funded companies had at 

least one woman on the executive team. Only 3 percent 

had a female CEO, and only 6 percent of partners in 

venture capital firms are women. However, venture 

capital-backed firms with women on the management 

team received somewhat greater investment on average 

than male-headed firms ($12 million versus $8 million). 

This difference in investment may be due to the fact that 

companies with women tend to be older and larger, as 

start-ups tend to hire more female as they age and 

expand. At venture capital firms themselves, female 

partners are less likely to invest in companies that go 

public, a performance gap that may be attributed to a 

lack of support from male colleagues.

Conclusion: A Path Forward

Despite continued progress, the current landscape in 

business career aspirations, business school enrollment 

and graduate experience, and ultimately career success 

can be marked by striking obstacles for women. The good 

news is that there are ways to address these challenges.

Working to improve gender dynamics in business will 

involve targeting gender disparity over a woman’s 

education and career, beginning with primary education 

and continuing to the workplace. To support a future 

where more young women pursue an interest in business 

careers, the task will be to change attitudes, build 

awareness about business opportunities, increase 

leadership opportunities, and build confidence in girls 

from an early age.

To help with these goals, the Administration is working 

to make sure that women succeed in the workplace. As 

the President has said, “When women succeed, America 

succeeds.” In April of 2014, the President issued an 

executive order stating that Federal contractors could 

not retaliate against employees inquiring about, 

disclosing, or discussing their compensation with fellow 

workers. He has also called on Congress to pass the 

Paycheck Fairness Act, which would extend these 

protections to the broader workforce. These policies 

help combat the gender differences in negotiation by 

giving women the opportunity to arm themselves with 

more and better information about what their 

colleagues earn. In addition, the first piece of legislation 

he signed into law, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, helps 

workers recover wages lost to discrimination.

The Small Business Administration is also expanding the 

InnovateHER Women’s Business Challenge, a series of 

local competitions hosted by universities, accelerators, 

clusters, scale-up communities, SBA’s resource 

partnership, and other local organizations. The 
10

competitions are designed to identify products and 

services that have measurable impacts on the lives of 

women and families, have potential for 

commercialization, and fill a need in the marketplace. 

Microsoft is partnering with SBA and is expanding the 

prizes awarded to the winners of the Challenge.

Finally, the President has called on Congress to pass the 

Healthy Families Act, which would give millions of 

workers the chance to earn up to seven days per year of 

paid sick time, and is expanding his support of state 

efforts for paid parental leave through a $2.2 billion 

dollar budget proposal. 

Business educators have a critical role to play in shaping 

the leaders of tomorrow and facilitating diverse 

leadership. Given the demographic changes both 

underway and on the horizon, business schools must 

adapt in order to ensure that their students are trained 

looking forward to the business environment in which 

they will lead. To be competitive, future leaders will 

increasingly need to be involved in recruiting and 

retaining talent and therefore will need to be aware of 

the work/family issues they, their colleagues, and their 

employees may face. By taking further steps to 

encourage more female students to pursue business 

careers, to ensure greater inclusivity in the classroom 

and on campus, and to better consider the lifetime 

career paths of their students, business schools can help 

our nation’s workplace policies catch up with the needs 

of our modern-day workers and employers.

In particular, business schools can help ensure access to 

business school and business careers for women by 

taking concrete steps to pursue outreach and 

engagement to build the pipeline of women interested in 

business careers, to partner with companies to help 

women get back on the fast track, and to ensure that 

business school is a viable investment for a range of 

students, especially those with a lower earnings profile. 

In addition, business schools have the opportunity to 

combat gender disparities by altering the business school 

experience to better address obstacles faced by women, 

including life-cycle challenges, facilitating mentorship 

and sponsorship opportunities, making curricula and 

faculty more representative, and ensuring that a diverse 

group of perspectives are brought into the classroom. 

Finally, the task ahead requires considering the 

experience beyond business school and the role models 

that business schools are providing. To improve the 

outcomes and success of women in the workplace, it will 

be critical to improve career support and services, build 

tools for entrepreneurs, and expand workplace 

flexibility. By being model employers, business schools 

can lead by example, creating opportunities for all 

workers to succeed, including recognizing the need for 

balance between work and family responsibilities, 

ensuring diversity in leadership positions, and 

recognizing the importance of value, tone, and a culture 

of inclusiveness. Working together, businesses and 

business educators can expand opportunities and ensure 

the future of U.S. competitiveness.

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