SUSAN MCTIERNAN, dean of the Mario J. Gabelli School of Business at Roger Williams University, has won the Patricia M. Flynn Distinguished Woman in Business Education Award from the Women Administrators in Management Education Affinity Group. The group was established in 2016 to recognize women whose leadership, research and educational initiatives have a significant impact on women through business education.
Why is it important to you to be an advocate for women? Despite their proportion of representation in the workforce around the world, women very often remain underpaid and underrepresented in leadership positions. The general statistic of women making 78 cents to every dollar that men make hasn’t moved very much. Even when looking at numbers that are adjusted for education and working hours, women still make less than men, and so we continue to experience the challenge of not reaching a situation where there is equal pay for equal work. Similarly, women’s share of the labor force was 46.8 percent in 2016, yet they held only 29 (or 5.8 percent) of CEO positions at S&P 500 companies. Women made up 20.2 percent of board seats of the Fortune 500 in 2016, and many companies still have no women directors. There is significant, untapped leadership potential among women, many more of whom hold graduate and professional degrees than ever before.
What is one lesson you hope to impart on your management students? The most important lesson would seem to be that students can accomplish virtually anything they put their minds to. Success does not happen overnight, and there are always going to be ups and downs along the way. Things that will frustrate them and cause them joy, but keeping a goal in mind and using life’s lessons to build toward achieving it can be very powerful.
What led you to want to be a business and management educator? Being able to work with young people, to partner with them as they discover themselves and their capabilities, and stay in touch with them after they graduate to learn of their successes is hugely rewarding. I hope that in some small way I have helped to contribute to the discoveries and the successes. Many of the students write back, some many years after they have left business school, to share that, indeed, my small contribution mattered. I consider myself lucky to play this role and am grateful for any way that I can help students succeed.
What actions would you like to see more businesses take to increase the number of women in leadership roles? Flexibility has become a more important characteristic of the world of work than ever before, and offering this to women, particularly those in caretaker roles, matters significantly. Fortunately, the ever-evolving technologies available to support varied work arrangements have enabled those who need flexibility to continue to be high-performing, contributing members of their organizations. Promoting women, allowing them to earn their way into the pipelines for advancement and providing support to moving into these roles are all important.
Why should companies prioritize diversifying their workforce? Diversity strengthens and enriches organizations in multiple ways. It is also simply good business. A good deal of research has been undertaken that demonstrates that companies with more-diverse workforces perform better financially. McKinsey has studied this for many years, and most recently reported that companies in the top quartile for gender diversity are 15 percent more likely to have financial returns above their respective national industry medians.
