[April 5, 2017: this article has been updated to reflect 2017 data]
The publication US News and World Report has compiled a list of the top 10 US business schools that recruit the most female students.
WIth women representing 85.3 percent of its MBA class, North Carolina's Meredith College leads the list. The University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee's Lubar School of Business comes in second, with women representing 83.3 percent of its current MBA class.
For top MBA programs in the US, gender diversity tends to be a bit lower. Of Harvard's current class, some 42 percent of students are women. At Stanford, it's just under 40 percent; at Chicago - Booth, it's almost 42 percent.
Globally, at least for the top business schools, the picture isn't too different. Some 34 percent of the current class at Singapore's NUS Business School are women; it's 30 percent at INSEAD. After making a push to break the 30 percent barrier a few years ago, the current class at London Business School is made up 35 percent women students.
In the US, gender diversity in MBA programs largely falls somewhere in the middle in terms of gender diversity in master's programs overall, with women tending to be underrepresented in heavily quantitative fields. According to 2013 data from the National Center for Education Statistics, in the years 2011-2012, only 27.7 percent of the master's degrees in computer and information sciences and support services were awarded to women. Likewise, in the same years, just over 23 percent of the master's degrees in engineering and engineering technologies were awarded to women.
In other fields, women outnumbered men. 76.9 percent of the master's degrees in education-related fields, for example, were awarded to women. Other fields where women outnumbered men included the communications fields (67.7 percent), human sciences (86.9 percent,) and health professions (81.4 percent).
Here's US News' top 10 list of US business schools programs in gender diversity:
| Business School | Percentage Women |
|---|---|
| Meredith College | 85.3 |
| Wisconsin - Milwaukee Lubar) | 83.3 |
| UNC - Wilmington | 69.7 |
|
Cal Poly San Luis Obispo |
68.6 |
| Sonoma State University | 66.7 |
| Clark Atlanta | 66.1 |
| Duquesne - Donahue | 64.7 |
| UNC - Pembroke | 61.8 |
| CSU - East Bay | 61.5 |
Read more on USNews' story on Business Schools that Enroll the Most Women MBA Students.
Photo: "HAAS @ UC Berkeley" by Prayitno / Flickr (cropped and rotated)
