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Janaki Gooty makes effort to advance gender-inclusivity at business schools
Janaki Gooty’s research paper identified three systemic challenges in business schools across the United States
Janaki Gooty / UNC Charlotte
Indian American professor at the Charlotte Belk College of Business at the University of North Carolina has authored a paper that offers practical solutions for systemic transformation in business schools to advance gender-inclusive leadership.
Janaki Gooty’s research paper co-authored with the help of global colleagues, offers actionable solutions to three systemic challenges in business schools – “the masculine social structure of business schools, a muddled approach to performance evaluation, and an underrepresentation of research topics that affect women in the workplace.”
A 2022 research on gender imbalance in academia by a professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, found that from 2009 to 2017 only 16 per cent of finance faculty across the top 100 business schools in the U.S. were women. It was further found that women are less likely to get tenure and work at top-tier universities than males are. During this time span, the data also revealed that the percentage of female tenured finance teachers was consistently less than 15 per cent.
Speaking of her research, called ‘Stronger Together: A Call for Gender-Inclusive Leadership in Business Schools’, Gooty said societal meanings of leadership and the systems are biased towards masculine realizations of leadership, power, and influence. As an example she highlighted how leadership development programs have taught women to sometimes change themselves and how they communicate while holding leadership.
“Our team’s work dispels the myth that women are less interested or less capable than men to take on leadership roles, or that they need to somehow fundamentally change who they are to do so. Instead, we call for a focus on systemic changes to business school power structures and cultures to create a new, vibrant playing field that benefits all,” Gooty said.
The researchers urged academic department chairs and members of committees responsible for deciding promotions and tenure to take action, stating that addressing the three systemic challenges "could benefit all members (of business schools), not just women, because it could signal more equitable pathways to multiple business school stakeholders and intended beneficiaries, such as students, donors, practitioners, and policymakers."
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