I recently attended a British Academy of Management conference focused on bringing gender issues into the business classroom.
Why is this an issue?
Isn’t business gender neutral?
The short answer is no. Business and management studies are not general neutral. So long as business has an ideal employee that is available to work 24 hours a day (and therefore has someone else at home to look after all the personal issues) business is not gender neutral. Whether you are a man or a woman, this ideal employee syndrome will affect you.
The problem is that in business school, at the undergraduate level, many students are in this situation – they have someone at home who does, or at least did until very recently, take care of any of the personal issues. That makes it much harder for students to understand why they should care about these issues. Unfortunately, it means that they often don’t care until they are 20 years into their careers.
As academics and instructors it is imperative that we bring these issues to the attention of the students.
If we don’t, who will?