Education Commons^™

Invisible Or Clichéd: How Are Women Represented In Business Cases?, Colleen M. Sharen, Rosemary A. Mcgowan

Brescia School of Leadership & Social Change Publications

Women represent just less than 50% of undergraduate business graduates and 36% of MBA graduates. Despite their strong presence in management education programs, women are noticeably absent from business case studies—a key pedagogical tool for instruction within management education programs worldwide. While case studies inform students about business processes, decision making, strategy, and leadership and management challenges, they also promote unintentional learning about gender. We argue that case studies contain a “hidden curriculum” that presents and reinforces implicit assumptions and stereotypes about women’s fitness to lead. Using NVivo 11 software to analyze the content of written cases, we examine the …