MBS offering scholarships for new Women In Leadership program

Melbourne Business Schoolis launching a five-day residential Women in Leadership program.

Melbourne Business School is launching a five-day residential Women in Leadership program to help boost the numbers of ­female executives and board members.

The inaugural program, to run from October 29 to November 2, will have at least 14 scholarship places worth $100,000 in total.

Two full scholarships, one for a woman working in a not-for-profit body and one for a woman working in the public sector, will cover the whole of the $8500 cost. Additionally, 12 partial scholarships that cover most of the cost will be available to MBS alumni.

The program facilitator, MBS professorial fellow Amanda Sinclair, said the course would be “an immersive experience” that would allow participants to reflect and explore new ideas and the ways in which they wanted to lead.

She intends the program to allow women’s diversity and the richness of their experiences to flourish.

“If women are working in a male-dominated environment, they are often expected to be a certain way. There can be all sorts of pressures not to be yourself,” Dr Sinclair said.

She said the program would also explore the idea there was not just one way to be successful, but multiple paths.

It would deal with a range of issues, including how to negotiate effectively, how to deal with power and how to find power.

“We have a focus on not just the mind and the intellect, but the whole person,” she said.

The program is designed for a small number of participants — no more than 30 — and is targeted at women working just under the executive level.

According to the organisation Chief Executive Women, about 60 per cent of ASX200 companies have no women in executive line roles. Only 8 per cent have more than 40 per cent of their executive line roles filled by women, the group said.

Dr Sinclair said demand for the course had been high and it may be held more often than once a year. “We’ve had far more applications than we can manage for this first program,” she said.

The scholarships are being funded by donors, including the Margaret Lawrence Bequest, which supports advancing wo­men in education and the arts.