The Shocking Discoveries Of Harvard Business School's Experiment To Improve Gender Equality

REUTERS/Brian SnyderStudents cheer at the Harvard Business School graduation ceremonyHarvard Business School, one of the world's most elite institutions, is nothing but a microcosm of the larger business world, where students are judged by wealth, appearance, and social status; a testosterone-fueled environment quiets, objectifies, and holds women back from achievement; and a predominately male leadership continues replicating itself.

That is according to a riveting new article by Jodi Kantor in The New York Times, which exposes the vast inequity on campus and also a controversial attempt to turn it around.

A two-year experiment initiated in 2010 by Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard's first female president, set out to improve the numbers and effectiveness of the school's female professors, as well as the classroom participation and academic achievement of its female students, according to the Times.

Faust brought in a new dean, Nitin Nohria, who vowed to "remake gender relations at the business school" by changing "how students spoke, studied and socialized," the article says. Administrators provided coaching to teachers, made attempts to level grading inequities, assigned students into study groups, and addressed the social environment.

The findings are pretty incredible.

Female students revealed a hostile environment for women:

It was like high school all over again, where men were judged by their cars and women by their looks:

Some of the smartest women in the world silenced themselves:

Women felt they had to choose between their academic and dating lives:

Female professors made up only a fifth of the tenured faculty, with 76 male tenured professors to just 19 women, and garnered little respect:

Female leaders can make all the difference:

Gender dynamics at the school were not actively addressed until a female leader, President Faust, forced the issue.

An administrator, Frances Frei, observed the female teachers and discovered they were either too lenient or too tough. She exclusively provided them feedback, coaching them to project warmth and high expectations simultaneously. Just this small amount of attention sent their teaching scores way up.

Female students began asserting themselves, raising the profile of women and the confidence of their female peers. When one female investment banking veteran took the lead on a class study session, another called it a "powerful message" to the class that a "girl knows it better than all of you."

Despite some hesitation by faculty members and grumbling by mostly male students, the social engineering worked:

See the full The New York Times article, "Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity."