Kelley school follows trend, suffers low female enrollment

Over the past 10 years, there has been a drop in female enrollment in U.S. business schools. \nWhile women make up 44 percent of enrollment at law and medical schools, only 30 percent of students enrolled in business programs are female, according to the Wall Street Journal's career Web site, www.careerjournal.com.\nAnd the same trend holds for IU's Kelley School of Business -- at about 33 percent female.\nCarolyn Wiethoff, director of the Women Initiative at Kelley, said there are multiple reasons for the low enrollment.\n"Women have no role models in the business world," she said. "We have Oprah or Martha Stewart but no CEOs or management examples to follow." \nOnly nine females are CEOs of Fortune 500 companies. Women make up just 13.6 percent of boards of directors, and only 5.2 percent of the top earners in the United States are women, according to the Forte Foundation, a women's leadership institute. \nWiethoff said women tend to be more sensitive to unethical practices when they occur.\nAlso to the disadvantage of women, she said, companies do not advertise how they provide for family balancing.\n"Women think they need to choose either a family or a successful business career," Wiethoff said. \nSome women are discouraged from pursuing a career in business by the type of classes they must take to earn a business degree, said Tera Dodero, president of Women in Business, an organization devoted to women earning their undergraduate degrees in Kelley.\n"Many women enroll at IU as business majors but are turned off by the slew of analytical classes, which are not at all balanced by creative or soft-skill concentrations," Dodero said in an e-mail interview. \nThe first time students are exposed to classes with more creative aspects is in I-Core, a program taken during Kelley students' third year in the business program. \n"By then, many promising women have given up," she said.\nShe said people assume there is no need to fight for women in the business world or think jobs are not available due to a hostile environment.\n"Corporate America is waiting for women with open arms," Wiethoff said, "but I'm not sure they are doing everything to persuade women of that fact."\nWiethoff, along with students and other female faculty, has started to take measures to increase awareness of opportunities for women in the business world. In the summer, Kelley hosts the Young Women's Institute, which this year brought together 30 high-school girls from five different states to discuss their ideas of business through mini focus groups. \n"Many women tend to make early career decisions without a lot of information, so we hold this institute to provide for that loss," said Kim Principe, a Women in Careers member who last year was on a committee that planned the first Women in Business conference. \nOrganizations such as the Forte Foundation and Catalyst offer networking for individuals, corporations, business schools and nonprofit organizations. Forte offers scholarships and general information for women looking to pursue a career in business. \n"I'm sure some women may also be intimidated by the low female enrollment, but depending on what profession you pick, you encounter the same thing in the real world," said Lindsey Kohlstedt, a Kelley School of Business alumna.\nKohlstedt works with an investment bank on an all-male team. She said it was difficult going through school without many women in her classes because many of her friends could not relate with her experiences. \n"Most of my close girlfriends at school were not in the business school, so it was difficult for them to understand the workload and academic pressure," she said. "But I'm fortunate to have some great women mentors from internships." \nThrough further research, networking, fundraising and more programs like the Young Women's Institute, Wiethoff said she hopes to find new ways to encourage women to "stick with business." They could become the role models the current generation lacks, she said.\n"This is not just a Kelley problem," she said. "Purdue, Michigan and other top business schools are facing the same dilemma. It's everywhere"