Thirty women will gather at the UCLA Anderson School of Management for class this week, but they aren’t typical business students. They are executives and managers, already established in the professional world, who are coming to learn tips for success in the historically male-dominated corporate environment.
The women are participating in the Anderson School’s Leadership Suite program, which offers courses for executives representing different minority groups. The women’s leadership institute runs today through Thursday, and later in the year the Anderson School will host similar classes for black, Latino, disabled and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender managers and executives.
“We look at core leadership topics through the prism of the experience of the people in the room ““ (in this case) women executives and managers,” said Laurie Dowling, director of the Anderson School’s Executive Education programs.
The course will be led by Connie Gersick and Martha Miller, both former faculty members at the Anderson School, according to the program’s Web site. A number of other faculty members, both from UCLA and other universities around the country, will teach parts of the course.
Though UCLA faculty can apply to participate in the program, it is not open to students.
Dowling said men outnumber women in high-level positions in the corporate world, and female executives and managers often face unique challenges.
“We’re looking at what is it like to be a woman in a company right now,” she said. “Women are not in the majority (at the executive level). Women have to be 150 percent better than men in order to be considered adequate at their jobs.”
Kim Dang, a fourth-year business-economics student, said she interned with Merrill-Lynch this summer and felt the corporate environment was male-dominated. She said she believes this is at least partly due to some employers preferring to hire men.
“Employers are very traditional,” she said. “They’re not thinking in terms of contemporary times.”
But Kiran Jolly, a first-year business-economics student, said that while she appreciates efforts to advance women in the corporate world, she believes the classes would be more effective if they included men as well.
She said that since the business world includes both women and men, teaching women skills separately does not mirror reality and may contribute to women being a minority at the executive level.
“It kind of detracts from the whole idea of women being just as good businesspeople as men,” she said.
Dowling maintained that in today’s work environment, women do sometimes face different challenges than men, and the goal of the leadership course is to give women information and connections that will help them navigate around those issues.
“(Women) don’t always have access to a diverse group of mentors,” Dowling said. “Special information is something we can obtain, we just have to be very creative.”
In an effort to get ahead in what Dowling said is still a male-dominated corporate world, some women have turned to unconventional methods.
For example, she said more and more women are taking up golf because it puts them in touch with other executives and allows them to be present when “informal” business decisions are made.
“It’s really quite strategic,” Dowling said.
She also suggested businesswomen identify one or two well-connected and informed people within their companies who could act as mentors.
These types of leadership skills are applicable to many careers, Jolly said, adding that she believes students would be interested in participating in similar programs.
Though the program is designed to help women balance executive responsibilities with other aspects of their lives, Dowling noted that it can be difficult for companies to accommodate executives’ personal lives, especially for women who have families to take care of.
“When you look at the pressures companies are under to perform every quarter, it’s very difficult to create situations in which your executives have good work-life balances,” she said.
Dowling also said she expects in the future, women and other underrepresented groups will increasingly find it easier to navigate the corporate world.
“The country is becoming more diverse, which will help women and others break in,” she said.