Business education is an increasingly important tool for women to bring themselves up to speed in a global and diverse workplace.
In the past two decades more women have enrolled for MBA programmes — widely considered crucial to career success — than ever before, says Professor Nick Binedell, director of the Gordon Institute of Business Science (Gibs), Pretoria University’s business school in Illovo, Johannesburg.
Research by the University of Michigan Business School, the university’s Center for the Education of Women and Catalyst, a New York-based non-profit research and advocacy organisation, found that women account for 30% of students at the top-tier business schools.
These figures are expected to increase as modern women effectively overcome barriers that previously prevented them from signing up in large numbers. Some of these include a lack of role models, issues of work-life balance (when work and family have to be juggled), lack of finance and lack of encouragement from employers.
In South Africa, the MBA and executive market is one of the fastest-growing education markets in the country, with an 82% increase between 1998 and 2000, albeit off a low base. The percentage of women taking MBA programmes in South Africa is expected to increase steadily as local women forge ahead in the business world, says Binedell.
In Gibs’s maiden 2000/01 MBA class 25% of students were female. This figure was in line with other top local business schools included in the 2000 report by The Economist intelligence unit: 23% for Wits Business School and 25% for the University of Cape Town’s Graduate School of Business. Women accounted for 32% of the 2001/02 Gibs MBA class. This year, 24% of the 2002/03 MBA class are female.
Sandra Benn, MBA programme director at Gibs, notes an increase in interest and in both the actual numbers of women doing MBAs. ‘The only deterrent for women seems to be family commitments and the greater emphasis society generally places on females to fulfil most domestic duties,” she notes.
It is important from a global perspective for women in business to continually update their skills with education, says Niven Postma, CEO of the South African Businesswomen’s Association. This, she says, is even more vital within the South African context considering a chilling statistic that puts the loss to the country of people with management skills over the past 15 years at around 100 000.
‘In South Africa, the perception persists that women have to work twice as hard as men to succeed, and that they often lose out in the remuneration stakes. Education can, therefore, be the trump card for women from a personal marketing perspective; it allows them stand out from the crowd,” notes Postma.
Tebogo Skwambane, an MBA graduate from Harvard Business School who is now a consultant in the Boston office of international management firm Bain & Company, says there is a need, specifically in South Africa, for more women to obtain their MBAs so they can benefit fully from a climate that is conducive to diversity in the workplace.
And greater numbers of women gaining their MBA qualification will help demystify the degree, says MBA graduate Vuyelwa Dlwati-Mahlangu, divisional director at Medscheme and fund manager for Bonitas Medical Scheme.
‘Many women, especially black women, have the wrong impression about the MBA — that it is impossible for them to achieve. But hopefully when they see more women qualifying they will realise it is entirely attainable,” she says. An MBA degree levels the gender playing fields.
One MBA graduate who says she is already benefiting from her MBA studies even though she has not yet completed the qualification is Kathy Eales, a sanitation specialist at the Mvula Trust (the largest water sector NGO on the continent).
‘It has honed my thinking, enhanced my confidence, given me a whole new set of analytical tools to work with, helped me integrate and leverage my life experiences through new conceptual models and radically revised my thinking about what business people really do.
‘It has also given me a real sense of the possibilities that exist in this world, with the tools and contacts to be proactive in actualising them.”
Tammi Krecek, a full professor at the University of Pretoria who is also in the process of completing her MBA, says the degree is giving her ‘new lenses” for life and is teaching her a new ‘language” through which to understand her organisation in the global perspective.
Once women are on the MBA programme, their performance is on par with that of their male counterparts, notes Laura Malan who was president of the Gibs 2000/01 MBA class.
‘Women should not be intimidated by the MBA course — our class was proof that women perform every bit as well as men. Between 40% and 50% of the students in the Gibs 2000/01 MBA class on the dean’s top 10 student list were women,” she says.
Proof that women do as well — and often better — than men in the corporate environment comes from Lilian Boyle, MBA graduate and now chief executive of Rennies Financial Services. She recognised in the 1980s that she needed to enhance her skills if she was to make progress in the business world.
‘What I gained from doing an MBA was greater self-confidence, partly as a result of doing well on the course; a discovery of the stamina within myself; and an insight into general business topics. Whether male or female, you also need to be at the right place at the right time to get noticed,” she says.
Women have entered the workplace at an unprecedented rate over the past generation. This global revolution has been driven mainly by societal and technological changes, and it continues to gain momentum as traditional work patterns are irrevocably changed, presenting new opportunities for working women.
In South Africa, figures from the All Media Products Survey show that by 1999 women comprised 40% of the national workforce — up from 34% in 1990. This figure continues to grow.
Binedell says women worldwide are not only playing an increasing leadership role in corporate and business life and enjoying success in industries most affected by change such as financial services, IT and telecommunications, but greater numbers are making a major impact in the entrepreneurial arena.
A significant trend is for more women to go into business for themselves as the corporate world is often limiting for them in terms of options, choices, career advancement opportunities and flexibility in relation to the realities of managing work and home life issues.
Jennifer Renton is communications manager at the Gordon Institute of Business Science.