Women Are Closing the B-School Dean Gap
Five women in top leadership positions talk about their career paths and offer lessons for others.
Lisa Ordóñez, dean of the Rady School of Management at the University of California at San Diego.
Photograph by Arelene Mejorado for Bloomberg Businessweek
The gap between women and men in leadership roles at US business schools has been shrinking, especially as more women are promoted to positions that are steppingstones to deanships. In 2023-24 women deans at 368 US business schools represented 30% of the total, according to research by the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business. That’s an increase from 17% in 2007-08. What’s more, the AACSB found, women now account for 43% of associate business school deans, a position that often leads to a deanship—34% currently in that role were once associate B-school deans.
Women still lag men considerably when it comes to deanships. The vast majority of women who are deans now have spent most of their careers underrepresented as faculty members and in leadership positions, says Sharon Matusik, dean of the University of Michigan’s Ross School of Business.