Gender Equality for Learning Leadership in Undergraduate Business Schools

Abstract

Some scholars suggest that business schools are failing the challenge of providing 21st century skills and in particular, they are failing women. As a conceptual model of how people can better adapt to change, the lens of transformational learning was used to shed light on whether women are at a disadvantage to men in transformational learning when exposed to the same experiences at undergraduate business school. Transformational learning occurs when a student's worldview is challenged and when the learner moves beyond old assumptions to see things in a new way. In this quantitative study of 256 undergraduate business students, women experienced comparable rates of transformational learning to their male counterparts and reported experiencing the same learning stimuli in personal relations, class room activities, and life events. It would appear that when exposed to the same stimuli, female undergraduate students are not at a disadvantage to male undergraduate students in learning how to be business leaders through transformational learning.