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Women hold 45.5% of postgraduate management qualifications in the UK

Business schools need to improve classroom diversity, finds new report from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). The Global Diversity of Talent – Attainment and Representation Report reveals that only 45.5 percent of graduate management education (GME) degrees are held by women in the UK.

Although this figure is higher than the 38.4 percent seen in the rest of Europe, more needs be done to promote inclusion.

The report identifies current levels of representation and will help graduate business schools gauge where their organisation’s efforts stand in the accessibility of their programmes.

It drew on data from across the US Census Bureau International Database, The World Bank, UNESCO, UNECE, and OECD. Using a consistent methodology from international sources, a data set was created to illustrate the diversity of the candidate pipeline for graduate management education (GME). This data set offers a point of reference for GME attainment as well as key measurements by region, country, location, age, gender, subject of study, race, and ethnicity.

The aim of the report is to provide a guide to target outreach and advocate for the value of GME to underrepresented populations around the globe. GMAC seeks to create a lens in order to allow for the better understanding of representation within the pipeline for graduate management education worldwide. They believe that in providing a framework to understand diversity and representation in the GME pipeline today will lay the foundations for the necessary uniformity for future decision-making and analysis that will impact all classrooms alike.

Sangeet Chowfla, President and CEO of GMAC, says ‘If “business is a force for good”, it stands to reason that business education should also be a force for good. This has many dimensions: the values that we seek to inculcate in our students, sensitivity to the important issues like sustainability and inequality and, importantly, the diversity of our classrooms.’

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by GMAC .