Inclusion in the Curriculum
Case Resources
THE CASE FOR WOMEN
At The Case for Women we are passionate about improving the presence of women in business school learning tools and their overall representation within the tertiary education sector. We monitor women’s presence across business schools in prominent business school case papers, as well as their participation as students and professors. We publish annual lists on business school case papers that contain women protagonists and have women present in them. We aim to support those wanting to improve the presence of women as leaders in business and in business schools. Through coaching and women’s programmes, we work to improve women's prospects of becoming a leader. We consult to businesses and universities on how they can best support and improve the presence of women at managerial and leadership level.
The Case for Women conducts research into the presence and portrayal of women in business school case papers. We record and analyse the gender balance of characters present in competition-winning papers awarded by the Case Centre. We consider how our future corporate leaders are impacted by the extensive use of gender-biased teaching material. The page below is currently being updated with the latest research for 2009 - 2018.
http://www.thecaseforwomen.com/research
HARVARD BUSINESS SCHOOL
Why Female Case Protagonists Matter
by Colleen Ammerman, Harvard Business School Gender Initiative
A robust body of experimental research indicates that seeing or hearing about women who have achieved professional success or attained leadership roles improves women’s self-perception and performance, countering stereotype threat, the “risk of confirming, as self-characteristic, a negative stereotype about one's group” (Steele and Aronson 1995). Stereotype threat can cause people in the stereotyped group to perform below their actual ability.
For instance, in a 2005 study in which college students read biographical essays about successful women in various occupations prior to completing a series of math questions, women who read no biographies scored worse than men (McIntyre, Lord et al. 2005). Meanwhile, women who read one or two biographies performed better, but still worse than men, and women who read three biographies of successful women scored as well as men. The study’s lead author also conducted a similar study using essays about women who were successful architects, lawyers, surgeons, and inventors (McIntyre, Paulson et al. 2003). Women college students who read the essays scored higher on a math test than women who read essays about successful corporations, and scored as well as men.
Not only is academic performance influenced by the presence of female role models, so are self-perception and behavior. Female students who read a biography about a successful woman in an occupation they planned to enter rated themselves more highly on career-related characteristics like intelligence and competence, compared to women who read about male role models in their fields (Lockwood 2006). In a more recent study, women students were exposed to a portrait of a female leader (Hillary Clinton or Angela Merkel), or to a portrait of Bill Clinton, or no portrait (Latu, Mast et al. 2013). Women in a room with a female leader portrait gave longer speeches and the quality of their speeches was rated more highly by themselves and by other participants. Women spoke less than men when in a room with a portrait of Bill Clinton or no portrait at all.
Moreover, leadership itself has traditionally been coded as masculine, and exposure to women in positions of authority has been shown to counter that stereotype. In an experiment conducted with women ages 17 to 62, participants exposed to photos of women leaders (e.g., CEOs, Supreme Court Justices) were more likely to associate women with leadership, using an implicit association test, than participants in a control group (Dasgupta and Asgari 2004).
Source: Harvard Business School Gender Initiative
HBS Gender Initiative’s Female Protagonist Collection
The Stereotypes in MBA Case Studies
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BERKELEY HAAS CASE SERIES
The Berkeley Haas Case Series is a collection of business case studies written by faculty members at the Haas School of Business. Cases are conceived, developed, written, and published throughout the year, on subjects ranging from entrepreneurship and strategy to finance and marketing. Each case includes a teaching note for use in the classroom.
Grameen America: The Pivotal Role of Technology in Scaling
Walske, Jennifer , Elizabeth Foster, and Laura D'Andrea Tyson
Publication date: 7/1/2018, pages 1-24
