The Analysis: Babson College Meets the Corporate Gender Challenge

How Babson's Center for Women's Leadership (CWL) shapes female students to take and keep top jobs in what is still a man's business world

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Marilyn Carlson Nelson found that there is no single solution that would bring more women into the ranks of corporate senior management. However, with a multi-pronged strategy, self-correction, and sheer tenacity, she achieved astonishing results at Carlson Companies.

Carlson Nelson calls for attracting more women into MBA programs, which certainly would be a plus. But this does not go far enough. Colleges and universities must devote more resources to develop female business leaders in undergraduate programs.

Educational institutions need a strategy to address this problem at multiple levels and in multiple ways. Babson College's approach takes the form of the Center for Women's Leadership (CWL), which we established in 2000 to attract more women to our MBA and undergraduate programs. Since then the percentage of women in our incoming undergraduate class has jumped from 34% to 45%.

Addressing the challenge of gender differences

CWL focuses not only on recruiting and admitting more females, but also gives them a wide array of opportunities to develop as entrepreneurial leaders with access to a strong network of connections to the business community. Deploying financial support, mentoring, research, speakers series, and female executives-in-residence, CWL creates a culture in which women can thrive. At both the MBA and undergraduate levels, women student organizations feature elected officers who have functional responsibilities in designing and delivering co-curricular programs, community service activities, and professional development and networking events.

Inside the classroom, CWL's curriculum encourages teamwork and leadership skills. From the first day of class, students form business teams in which gender differences exist—and, like any other differences, must be dealt with. As men and women learn to work together as professionals, female students can assume leadership positions, including that of CEO, in these start-up businesses.

While almost all of CWL's activities are open to males as well as females, 20 undergraduate women are selected each year for partial four-year scholarships and are admitted into the Women's Leadership Program. This program focuses on recruiting students who will take leadership roles at Babson and beyond; students must actively demonstrate that they are doing so in order to continue in the program. This cohort effectively serves as a women's affinity group for networking and mutual support—but they collaborate and compete with all students in the classroom, just as they will in the business world.

Opening Corporate Connections

The presence of more women on campus has changed the experience for the entire student body, and has inevitably altered the ways our male students think about leadership and collaboration. The bottom line is that our campus community now better reflects society in all its activities. We have consciously tried to create a student experience and environment that looks at the development of the whole person—not only what they learn in the classroom, but also what goes on in residence halls and in social activities—so that Babson's men and women learn to interact with each other in a number of dimensions, in different and positive ways.

Still, it doesn't do much good to prepare young women to become business leaders if their opportunities to advance to top management positions in corporate America remain limited. That is why CWL works with over two dozen organizations that give us direct access to recruiting tools and potential employers.

Beyond CWL's programs, its mere presence on campus demonstrates to prospective students, matriculating students, alumni, and employers our commitment to increase female leadership in the corporate world. Every year, alumnae and students participate in recruiting the next generation of women leaders, and former students and female role models return to campus to teach and mentor.

Undergraduate business programs that focus on developing female leadership inside and outside the classroom should be part of strategies to increase pathways to the top for women in business. Corporate managers who respect and encourage these efforts can dramatically facilitate the process.

Click here to read an additional analysis on this issue.

Leonard A. Schlesinger is president of Babson College. He came to Babson from Limited Brands, where he served in executive positions since 1999, most recently as vice-chairman and chief operating officer. His academic career includes twenty years at Harvard Business School, where he most recently served as the George Fisher Baker Jr. Professor of Business Administration, leading MBA and executive-education programs. Schlesinger is well-known for his pioneering research and publications on the "service profit chain." He is the author or co-author of nine books and has written more than 40 articles for academic audiences, as well as for The New York Times, Fast Company, and Harvard Business Review.

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