Harvard Business School’s Gender Initiative: Too Little Too Late

Reading the New York Times piece on gender relations at Harvard Business School should be encouraging, but I don’t blame you if it reminds you of trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a dixie cup. The fact is, HBS’s new gender equality initiative could change the world — if it weren’t confined to a tiny group of super-elite (or just super-privileged) adults who have, for the most part, already made up their minds about gender relations.

Naturally, the administrators leading the push had good intentions. The problem was clear: Although women at Harvard Business School were clearly as talented, intelligent, and motivated as their male peers when they entered, their grades were consistently lower. While they made up nearly 40% of the student body on a given year, they were rarely more than 20% of the Baker Scholars, an academic honor given to the top five percent of every class. The numbers showed that women performed about as well as the men on tests, but their participation grades (which could be up to 50% of their final marks) fell short. On the faculty side, male professors outnumbered the women by a wide margin, and more of them got tenure, so a male-dominated culture became more and more entrenched.

So Dean Nitin Nohria — appointed by Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s first female president — set a far-reaching gender relations improvement plan into motion. For the female students, there were participation workshops (in which women, many of whom had come from high-powered careers, were taught to raise their hands more assertively, prompting eye-rolls from some). A reported case of sexual harassment inspired a series of mandatory student body discussions, which were either a cultural breakthrough or “forced” and “patronizing,” depending on who you poll.

Many changes targeted the faculty. It wasn’t clear that women’s trailing grades were entirely their fault; subconscious biases could easily convince professors that the men in class had been more “assertive”. Harvard hired a stenographer to sit in every classroom, so that professors would have a record of who said what when deciding those crucial participation grades. New computer programs could detect grading biases, whether they were against women, people who spoke English as a second language, or just people who sat on the left side of the room. In addition, female professors were given specific coaching in classroom management, in hopes that higher student reviews would lead to higher tenure rates.

And it worked. In the class of 2013, the class of Baker Scholars was 40% women! Female professors’ reviews improved! It’s tempting to wax hypothetical on the potentially wide-reaching consequences. Some of those students will get better jobs than they otherwise would have, and more women in top corporate roles has actually been shown to be correlated with higher profits — and, of course, a more female-friendly work environment. And when younger girls have more role models, they might find themselves raising their hands a little more assertively, right? Sure.

But will this change gender dynamics in America? Not for another few centuries. For every few women whose grades went up, there were more students who felt that the whole process was a disruptive waste of time. Reading about the disgruntled men of the HBS class of 2013, at first I wasn’t particularly sympathetic. “Oh, I’m sorry, privileged males of Harvard Business School. Did the world not revolve around you for one second? That must have been so hard.” But it reveals an important point: most of the students at HBS have already decided where they stand on gender roles. By the time you make it to graduate school, your formative years are basically over.

This is a fine program, but we don’t need it at HBS. We need it for undergraduates. We need it in high schools. We need to get to students, male and female, and teach them that being assertive doesn’t make a girl less dateable (a real concern among the students interviewed at Harvard). We need to get to kids while they’re still impressionable enough to listen. If nothing else, the Harvard Business School example provides a case study in social engineering.

So let’s apply what we’ve learned, shall we? There are three major reasons the program worked as well as it did.

One. The problem (and the solution) was tangible.

Female students weren’t making the Baker Scholar cutoff, and female professors weren’t getting tenure. It’s easier to measure progress when you know exactly what you’re looking for. You can talk about “culture” and “social change” all day long, but you need to know when you’re getting results.

Two. Change was mandated from the top.

The president of Harvard hired Dean Nohria with the explicit goal of improving gender dynamics. Failure was not an option. The administration went all in, even when they met considerable resistance from some students, and that makes a huge difference.

Three. The most productive moments came from students.

Group discussions were most productive when administrators stepped back and let students talk about what actually bothered them (in one case, the overwhelming culture of class privilege). Study sessions led by the Women’s Student Association proved to everyone that women could be just as assertive, capable, and intelligent as their male peers. “It’s the most powerful message: this girl knows it better than all of you,” student Kate Lewis told the New York Times. As my ninth grade creative writing teacher used to say, “Show, don’t tell.”

I’m not bashing Harvard’s initiative. It’s definitely a step in the right direction, and I hope the women of Harvard Business school are more empowered because of it. But hopefully, the next generation of women won’t need this kind of program by the time they get to Harvard.