File photo of dean of Harvard Business School Nitin Nohria
Harvard Business School's India-born dean Nitin Nohria has publicly apologised for the school's treatment of women students and professors, and vowed to make changes at the premier institution to deal with gender bias.
Mr Nohria acknowledged that Harvard Business School (HBS) had sometimes treated its female students and professors offensively.
Mr Nohria conceded there were times when women at Harvard felt "disrespected, left out, and unloved by the school. I'm sorry on behalf of the business school," he told at a gala event to celebrate the 50th anniversary of women MBAs at the school.
"The school owed you better, and I promise it will be better," CNN money quoted Mr Nohria as saying.
Among other things, Mr Nohria pledged to more than double the percentage of women who are protagonists in Harvard case studies over the next five years, to 20 per cent. Currently, about 9 per cent of Harvard case studies - which account for 80 per cent of the cases studied at business schools around the world - have women as protagonists.
He said he would meet with HBS faculty to discuss the objective.
His comments come five months after an article in The New York Times that described the school's efforts to deal with gender inequality.
Mr Nohria's newly stated objective for case studies would have a big impact on the way leadership is taught in the world's business schools because almost all MBA students are exposed to HBS cases.
At the event, Mr Nohria said that a record 41 per cent of this year's entering class of MBAs were women, up from 35 per cent 10 years ago and only 25 per cent in the class of 1985.
"A lot of people wondered if we had to put a thumb on the scale," he said, to reach the record female enrolment number.
"Every one of those women deserve to be at Harvard Business School."
Harvard Business School began to admit women to its two-year MBA programme in 1963 with eight students.
Besides the effort to "dramatically" increase the number of female protagonists in case studies, Mr Nohria also pledged to launch a programme to help more women serve on boards of directors and to more meaningfully encourages mentorship of female students and alumni.
"We want to make sure the school provides pathways for alumni to help each other," said Mr Nohria.
"More than anything else, you have my deep and solid commitment that the entire school will be more open to and encouraging to women," Mr Nohria vowed.
"These ideas will only be quaint unless we work relentlessly to improve things."
Mr Nohria graduated from St Columba's School in New Delhi and graduated from IIT, Bombay. He earned a PhD in Management from the MIT Sloan School of Management.