This post first appeared on Forbes.com

This week’s Sloan Women in Management Conference on ‘Innovating Through
Adversity’ poses tough questions about the systemic gender inequalities that still
exist in business today. Marissa Mayer of Google, Jennifer Siebel Newsom of Miss
Representation, and Fredericka Whitfield of CNN will take the stage to share their
insights on women’s advancement in business. Behind the scenes, a fantastic team
of ambitious MBA women are organizing the conference at one of the nation’s top
business schools.

But do business schools really prepare women for senior leadership roles with
companies?

As a graduate of Wharton’s undergraduate program and an MBA candidate at MIT’s
Sloan School of Management, I’d say no. Here’s why.

Business schools primarily think about female and male students as future
employees rather than as women and men with complex lives for whom
employment is a significant, but not the only, activity. If MBA programs truly want
to develop principled leaders, they need to address the different sets of concerns
students can expect to encounter in the classroom, as well as when they graduate
and enter the workforce.

Women in MBA programs often feel like they have to “do it all”, and that the
frequent tradeoffs inherent in a busy work and family life (often leading to a high
level of stress and anxiety) are something to be overcome, not managed. Imagine
the possibilities if business schools give the private concerns of their students a
genuine place in the planning of work through courses and programs on gender and
life issues, such as a talent management course for both men and women, a case
study in all leadership courses on the impact of diverse groups on career and home
dynamics, and continued support for gender-related conversations and discussions.

“The last frontier for women’s advancement at work is understanding how men
and women re-define roles at home,” says Anne Weisberg, head of Diversity
at Blackrock, a global financial management firm and author of Mass Career
Customization: Aligning the Workplace with Today’s Nontraditional Workforce. She

emphasizes that MBAs should be discussing life and home issues as part of the
planning of work at the business school level. Currently there is no place for these
issues, but these topics need to be integrated into the curriculum.

The after-effects are clear. According to Harvard Kennedy School Professors
Barbara Kellerman and Deborah Rhode in their book, Women and Leadership: State
of Play and Strategies for Change, “one in three women with MBAs are not working
full time, compared with one in twenty men. A large portion of these women do,
however, want to return to work, yet generally do not without significant career
costs and difficulties.” Both men and women need to be made aware of these costs
and difficulties starting in business school, they’re going to lose good employees and
face major transition costs.

Aside from future concerns for women, there are many areas in current business
school environments where women face different challenges than men do based
on age, participation, and who they consider role models. The implications of not
addressing gender-specific challenges in the workplace end up hurting both men
and women’s recognition of gender differences in leadership positions.

”On average, women are younger than men in top ten MBA programs,” says MIT
Sloan Dean David Schmittlein. “This may lead to a negative perception of their
experience in the business school environment.” What’s more, he cites research
that “has shown that women aren’t called to participate as proportionally as often in
the classroom. When women are called on, the next person is less inclined to build
on their comments.”

According to a study entitled Wives of the Organizations, by Leipzig Professor Anne
Huff, women tend to volunteer more often for maintenance-level roles such as note-
taking, opportunities that they may not get recognition for. Huff’s research shows
that gender is an area to be further investigated in MBA programs.

There are also clear differences for women in terms of role models and faculty at
business schools. “Some of the most well regarded and least well regarded faculty
are women,” says Schmittlein. Yet women still make up a much smaller proportion
of faculty across business schools.

While I believe hosting women in management conferences at the nation’s top
business programs is an important first step to building a female talent pool,
women senior leaders and business school leadership must recognize how gender
differences in business school play a major role in and out of the classroom as well
in future careers. In today’s age, this issue is not just for women, but is crucial for
both men and women to reach their individual and often shared potential in work
and life. There is a need for new dialogue across MBA programs that address how
gender plays a role in business school environments and subsequently in building a
pipeline of female leaders in companies and on boards.

This post was cross-published at Levo League and Sloan Women in Management blog.

On Thursday Nov 3, Suzanne Bates, an expert on personal branding and author of Discover your CEO Brand spoke at the Successful You! Women’s Leadership Forum sponsored by Microsoft. She asked the middle and senior women managers in the room, “What is a brand? What is your personal brand? How do you figure out what your brand is and leverage value in your career and business?” When asked how many people knew what their brand was, about 25% of the room raised their hands.

Suzanne says, “a brand is the conversation people have about you.” A personal brand is not a first impression, it is a consistent message that builds over time. The very effective great leaders not only know who they are, but also they know what they stand for. As people understand who you are and what you stand for your value grows. For example, Amazon is one of the most trusted brands in the world. Every time you go there you have same experience and they give you preferences of items to buy based on what they know about you.

Two personal branding tips from Suzanne are:

1) Communicating your brand drives exceptional value, it attracts people and opportunity. When the right leader is matched up with the right organization at the right time, the results are spectacular. Be bigger-a brand can always be more.

2) Connect your values to actions and results.  She describes that sharing a personal story is a powerful brand builder. Ursula Burns, CEO of Xerox says, “Never be a victim, circumstances don’t define anyone, where you are is not who you are.”

At first, I was hesitant to publicize my brand and expertise on women, leadership and movement. I soon realized that it’s not about me. It’s about my work in the world and I am just a vehicle. If I get nervous before a speech, if I hold back in my writing, if I don’t share my personal brand, I’m not serving my purpose. Forget the imposter syndrome—share your personal brand!

Today is the launch of the Girl Effect Blogging Campaign, a collaborative effort of hundreds of bloggers coming together to write about The Girl Effect on Oct 4, 2011.

To start, watch this 2 min video.

It’s clear. The studies show that investment in women and girls can change the world and the way we live.

Growing up in a South Asian family of physicians, there was always a ‘conventional path’ for a girl to take. When I was 17, I attended a global entrepreneurship program where I met non-traditional women entrepreneurs and innovators who expanded my own view of my possibilities. The next year, I founded a high school Young Women’s Leadership conference where I invited female business leaders to tell their stories to girls in Pittsburgh.

Soon after, as a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania, I turned my passion for women’s leadership into activism and began to work with Choice USA, a national women’s rights organization.  I became one of ten national leaders who mobilized the largest youth delegation of over 3,000 college students to attend the March for Women’s Lives on April 25, 2004, a gathering of over 1.15 million people in Washington, D.C.

As an organizer of the March, I worked tirelessly in college to find ways to further the causes of women’s health and reproductive freedom. I fondly recall the image of thousands of sleeping bags around me in Union Hall in Washington DC. Standing together wearing orange shirts, our youth contingent stood out in the sea of one million people on Capitol Hill. This unforgettable image was captured on the front page of the New York Times the next day. For my work organizing the march, I was named one of Teen People’s “20 Teens Who Will Change the World” and one of “15 Students You Don’t Know But Will” in Newsweek’s college edition.

When I look back at these formative years and my activism work, I can’t help but think about the investment that was made in me by women leaders. Now it is our turn to invest in the next generation of girls and women around the world who don’t have the same choices and possibilities.

Choice is not just a privilege, it has a moral dimension. The Girl Effect campaign is helping us invest in girls to change our world.

So, what can you do?

Follow or blog about the Girl Effect Campaign, join the conversation on Twitter/Facebook, donate to a women’s organization, or just be a MENTOR to a girl or young woman. Often, the biggest differences that we make are in our daily lives are to the young people we can touch in our everyday encounters.

And here’s a few more stats for your next conversation….

• When a girl in the developing world receives seven or more years of education, she marries four years later and has 2.2 fewer children. (United Nations Population Fund, State of World Population 1990.)
• When women and girls earn income, they reinvest 90 percent of it into their families, as compared to only 30 to 40 percent for a man. (Chris Fortson, “Women’s Rights Vital for Developing World,” Yale News Daily 2003.)
• One girl in seven in developing countries marries before age 15. (Population Council, “Transitions to Adulthood: Child Marriage/Married Adolescents,”  www.popcouncil.org/ta/mar.html [updated May 13, 2008].)