ICICI bank chief, Chanda Kochhar, on Monday, blamed excessive focus on quantitative aptitude (mathematics) in entrance tests, for lower representation of women in business schools (B-Schools), and stressed on the need for the exams to be “all rounded”.
“The MBA entrance exams are so quantitative-oriented that it keeps out more and more women from joining the MBA classes. If we were to make the entrance exams more all-rounded you could see more participation,” said Kochhar, the managing director and chief executive of the country’s largest private sector lender, in a speech.
Is this a reference to the age-old belief that women aren’t genetically wired for mathematics? Could the low number of women in B-schools also be a result of bad performance in interviews? Social conditioning makes many women less confident than their male counterparts and the interview panel is after all a team of people, armed with their own baggage and prejudice.
Kochhar herself went to a B-School before joining the bank. According to her, women constitute only 10-15 per cent of the B-school students at present.
She also questioned the need for so much focus on QA, saying, a course on developing general managerial abilities does not require so much of focus.
“If there is a course that is quant-oriented, you need to focus on that, but if it is a course that is more general management oriented, do you not need entrance examinations which are more all-round?” she said.
Chanda also stressed the need to make workplaces more diverse, saying a business can deliver better results with more percentage of women. Also, with half of the consumers being women, there is a need for businesses to have more women to understand the consumer better, she said.
She also regretted that over 80 per cent of ‘workforce-ready’ women are not joining the organised sector, and exhorted women to believe in themselves and be ready to put in long hours and travel if the work demands.
Kochhar, however, sought to underplay the impact of careers on personal lives, saying women can maintain work-life balance even while pursuing their careers.
Image Courtesy: BCCL
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