Women, Responsible Leadership and the MBA (part 3): Empowering Women

Business schools around the world have taken a wide range of approaches when it comes to providing specific opportunities to promote and empower women in business. In the first blog we looked at a range of resources on this topic, while in the second we looked at schools that provide free certificate programmes through the 10,000 Women initiative. Here we look at a range of other approaches being taken to empower women in the corporate world.

Rotterdam School of Management in the Netherlands has an initiative called Women Empowerment which encourages women to empower other women in business networks and high-performance environments. These activities were designed to address the specific challenges that women face when climbing the corporate ladder – a subject of great interest to project initiator and RSM Associate Dean of MBA programmes, Dr. Dianne Bevelander, who has actively researched the subject. In 2011, also based on this research, the school offered an elective called Mount Kilimanjaro Women Empowering Women. Fifteen women from the MBA programmes joined the course which involved going to Mount Kilimanjaro and focused on developing a greater understanding of how to work with other women in high performance environments.

In a bid to encourage more women to join the science, innovation and technology sectors and raise the profile of women currently in the industry, Newcastle University Business School in the UK launched an initiative called “North East of England Role Model Platform for Innovative Women.” The scheme, which has been established to help women overcome personal and professional barriers to success in the science, innovation and technology sectors, was initiated following research carried out by Professor Pooran Wynarczyk of Newcastle University Business School’s Small Enterprise Research Unit that showed that women were massively under represented in certain sectors, namely, in science, technology and innovation.

Bentley University’s Center for Women and Business is focused on helping women reach their full potential in the workplace and helping corporations engage the full potential of talented women leaders. Among other things they organize Best Practices Forums to engage critical thought-leaders and business professionals around the world to provide solutions for helping businesses harness the full potential of talented women leaders within their organizations and incorporating a culture of inclusion.

University of St. Gallen in Switzerland has put together a Management Certificate  called Women Back to Business, which helps women returning from an absence re-enter the job market in managerial positions. The programme is in collaboration with the Executive School of Management, Technology and Law together with Swiss and international companies. It is a one-year training program which includes career coaching, skill training, reflection workshops and practical experience in a company, public organization or NGO.

If you would like to share your initiatives around this topic in future posts please contact me.