What Wharton’s Majority Female MBA Program Means for Other Top-Tier B-Schools
Gender parity in graduate programs remains elusive, but Wharton's progress marks an important step towards that goal
When the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton announced that its 2023 MBA class was the first in the program’s 140-year history to be majority female, it was a pretty big deal. It was a first for a top-10 rated school, one that happens to be among the largest in the US. Combined enrollment at the other six business schools in Businessweek’s latest Best B-Schools ranking where women meet or exceed gender parity is less than one-third that of Wharton’s.
Martin Van Der Werf, director of editorial and education policy at Georgetown University’s Center on Education and the Workforce, says Wharton’s milestone “tells you something about changes in the wind.” Sure, men still hold the power at many business schools. “We're not at the ‘Holy Cow, we finally reached parity’ moment,” Van Der Werf says. But for some schools, as documented in the ranking, that moment is within reach.