爱漫岛

Sponsored Content

• In 1965, fewer than 7 percent of women owned businesses. While women have made great strides toward parity, substantial funding gaps remain between male and female entrepreneurs.
• In 1972, only one Fortune 500 company had a woman as CEO. Today, 52 hold this distinction—but only one is led by an African American woman.
• Even though women’s employment has risen significantly in the past 60 years, poor women and women of color still face structural inequities in the workplace, and their livelihoods remain precarious.

 
Anniversaries always provide time to pause for reflection, and this year marks the 60th anniversary of the academic publishing company Sage. The company was founded in New York City in 1965, when Sara Miller McCune launched her first scholarly journal, Urban Affairs Quarterly (now Urban Affairs Review), a publication that covers the social sciences, community engagement, and sustainable development.

Legend has it that McCune financed the business with the 500 USD she raised by selling her air conditioning unit. She was committed to what she described as “” (economic, educational, environmental, and social), and she vowed that the company would be .

To mark the company’s diamond anniversary and celebrate McCune’s achievement, I wanted to consider how business schools have championed women in business over the past 60 years. I reached out to four Sage authors and editors and asked them to reflect on the ways the roles of women entrepreneurs, leaders, and managers have changed since 1965. I also asked them what these changes have meant for business schools. Here’s what they had to say.

A New Legitimacy for Women Entrepreneurs

Heidi Neck is the Jeffry A. Timmons Professor of Entrepreneurship and academic director of the Babson Academy at Babson College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She is also lead author of  .

The odds were against a woman entrepreneur in 1965. It was a time when women had no business networks, no credit, no childcare, no support systems, and really no legitimacy as entrepreneurs.

Just two years before Sara Miller McCune started her company, the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was signed into law in the U.S. It would be another nine years before a woman could apply for a credit card in her own name, thanks to the 1974 Equal Credit Opportunity Act. Almost 20 years later in 1993, the Family and Medical Leave Act helped women balance work and family responsibilities, especially through paid maternity leave.

But in 1965, there were very few female entrepreneur role models. Fewer than 7 percent of women owned businesses—which is an estimate, because the U.S. government did not start tracking the gender of business owners until 1978.

“Women entrepreneurs can be not only changemakers, but also pioneers and revolutionaries who challenge inequality to advance justice.”—Heidi Neck, Babson College

Today, women-owned businesses  of all U.S. businesses and employ 9.2 percent of total employees. They in sales, but this figure could easily double if  of female entrepreneurs had access to venture capital. Pre-pandemic  that, despite the significant funding gap, women outperform their male counterparts in revenue and return on investment.

The progress since 1965 has been remarkable, yet the pursuit of greater legitimacy for women in entrepreneurship is ongoing, especially in male-dominated, nontraditional industries.

McCune proved that women entrepreneurs can be not only changemakers, but also pioneers and revolutionaries who challenge inequality to advance justice. All business schools should come to recognize that entrepreneurship was and still is a force for systemic change. As we research and teach about entrepreneurship, business schools should champion women entrepreneurs and continue to emphasize their contributions to positive societal impact.

The Current Picture for Women Leaders

Heather I. Scott is associate director of engagement and retention for the Office of Student Achievement at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. In addition, she is series editor for .

While women leaders are not a monolith, they often have one distinguishing feature in common—a spirit of innovation. Business school supports this claim and demonstrates how women leaders contribute to and mediate organizational innovation. have shown that women leaders have many beneficial effects on organizational culture through their collaborative, empathetic, and transformational styles of leadership.

And yet even though the number of women leaders has grown over the past 60 years, women continue to be underrepresented at the highest levels of leadership. Three factors are mainly to blame: Workplaces are still affected by ongoing gender biases and stereotypes; women often suffer from ; and top leadership roles feature a lack of flexibility and work-life balance, which tend to be important to women.

The glass ceiling is evidenced by the low number of women serving in leadership positions at Fortune 500 companies, especially when we consider women leaders with intersectional identities. For example, following Rosalind Brewer’s departure as Walgreens’ CEO in 2023, TIAA’s Thasunda Brown Duckett became the  of a Fortune 500 company. This fact highlights the fragility of the gains women have made in leadership roles, particularly women of color.

“Women leaders have beneficial effects on organizational culture through their collaborative, empathetic, and transformational styles of leadership.”—Heather I. Scott, Georgia Institute of Technology

As educators and business school leaders, we are called upon to cultivate a landscape that can support sustainable progress. from the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC) indicate that when business schools employ flexible program modalities, they attract an increased number of women as applicants. By actively recruiting the next generation of female talent, these schools play a critical role in creating an enduring pipeline of female leaders. This talent is further supported by inspirational groups such as in the U.S. and the women in academia network in the U.K.

Celebrating Sara Miller McCune’s founding of Sage reminds us of the and diverse academics. They have been responsible for advancing knowledge around some of our most challenging, complex, and cross-disciplinary issues.

The Role of Women in Organizations

Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar is an associate professor at the Suleman Dawood School of Business at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Pakistan. She is co-editor-in-chief of  .

At first glance, it appears that women have made great strides in the workplace over the past six decades. During that time, women’s employment in waged work has increased significantly. In fact, across much of the Global South, it has more than doubled.

Even so, women’s presence in organizations continues to be fraught with vulnerabilities and marked by exploitation and discrimination. Women continue to be frustrated by the gender wage gap, the glass ceiling, and incidences of sexual harassment in the workplace. These factors often combine to prevent women from taking higher-level positions, especially in the C-suite. Some of these problems are slowly being ameliorated by the enactment of public policies and heightened awareness that have come about since the start of the .

“Women’s presence in organizations continues to be fraught with vulnerabilities and marked by exploitation and discrimination.”—Ghazal Mir Zulfiqar, Lahore University of Management Sciences

However, things appear much more dismal when we consider women of color and poor, migrant, and Indigenous women. All of them face structural inequalities that will not simply vanish when more women advance to positions of authority. As the worldwide economy has become more reliant on global production networks and fragmented outsourcing, livelihoods have become more precarious, time poverty more severe, violence more pervasive, and collectivization more difficult. These conditions can affect all workers, but tend to be especially true for women.

Feminist economists have long pointed out that rising rates of employment do not necessarily mean more empowerment for women, who too often work under . What matters for women are the conditions of work and the terms of employment.

For poor and marginalized women, simple fixes will not do, as the structure of the global economy necessitates their vulnerabilities. Critical management scholars agree there is no alternative but to rework the way we produce, consume, and organize, as well as the way we care for each other and achieve solidarities. Only then will women have better experiences in the workplace.

The Statistics on Women in Management

Gary N. Powell is professor emeritus of management at the University of Connecticut’s School of Business in Storrs. He also is author of  .

We can gauge the status of women in management over the past 60 years by examining legal, social, and research trends. We can gain even more insights when we also consider some statistical trends and their implications.

In terms of educational attainment between 1965 and now, the numbers look good. In the U.S., the proportion of bachelor’s degrees earned by women increased from only 8 percent to 47 percent, while the proportion of master’s degrees earned by women rose from 3 percent to 49 percent.

The proportion of women in management positions in the U.S. appears to be consistent with educational trends. The figure has more than doubled, from 16 percent in 1965 to 42 percent today. However, in 2025, female managers remain concentrated at lower levels, and they tend to hold positions with less status, power, and authority than men. The higher the level of the organization, the fewer women are present.

“Female managers remain concentrated at lower levels and hold positions with less status, power, and authority than men.”—Gary N. Powell, the University of Connecticut

Evidence suggests that a glass ceiling keeps women from rising to top management positions solely because they are women. For example, the first female CEO of a Fortune 500 company was Katherine Graham, who became head of The Washington Post in 1972. Today, 52 Fortune 500 CEOs (10.4 percent) are female. This statistic would seem to represent a considerable increase in female CEOs of these companies in the past 53 years—5,100 percent, to be exact.

However, if we look at that statistic from the other side, the view is less hopeful. The number of male CEOs has dropped from 499 to 448 since 1965. If women have gained 10.4 percent of the top spots at Fortune 500 companies in the past 60 years, this means that the percentage of men in those positions has only decreased by 10.2 percent over the same period of time. Therefore, the same trend in the status of women in top management may be interpreted both optimistically (“look at how far women have come”) and pessimistically (“look at how far women have to go to achieve gender parity in top management positions”).

One of the most important things scholars can do to promote gender parity is to continue pursuing rigorous research on the status of women in management. In doing so, we can point out ongoing struggles and highlight success stories.

The Present and the Future

Sage is one of those success stories. Today, the company founded by Sara Miller McCune publishes 1,300 academic journals and 375 new books each year, as well as a range of for researchers, educators, and learners. Over the years, Sage has integrated cutting-edge , expanded into interdisciplinary fields of study, and added open-access research publishing. More recently, we introduced tech-enabled experiential learning options with and for students.

The company still , free to collaborate with universities globally to create long-term positive impact. Here’s to the next 60 years as we create many more success stories together.