Gender and management, gender and managerial performance, gender, and corporate world bias were discussed at the Management Café meeting at MIM. Nadia Omelchenko, vice-president of the IT-Integrator, Vyacheslav Pokotylo, MIM’s vice-president and Oleksandr Sudarkin, MIM’s pre-MBA program director moderated the discussion.

The audience discussed if there were purely male or female management methods and how effective they were, whether gender affected companies’ performance and if what were biases against women and how to cope with them.

Discussion participants’ had controversial experience. Regardless of the fact that research proved the gender stereotypes wrong many of those present could not break with them. Oleksandr Sudarkin referred to the latest Ukrainian research showing that in academia only 25% of university chancellors were women. When it came to the National Academy of Sciences full membership (the highest official recognition in Ukraine), the situation was even worse. Only 1% of the full members were women. It was only logical to find the answers to the “why”.

The debate showed the following hurdles on the way of females careers: stereotypes on both sides, no life-work balance, and lowered career expectations. E.g. when Nadia Omelchenko asked women – participants who wanted to be CEO only one third said me.

No matter which stereotypes each of us may have, better performing and more innovative companies have gender-balanced boards. Therefore, many big and successful companies have quotas for women in their management. Such situations may ruin the stereotypes in a majority of the places.