In this in-depth article, former female students of the Harvard Business School discuss the unbelievably sexist environment they survived. They recall it was even worse than the sexist environments at the financial companies on Wall Street (like BoA/Merrill Lynch). Male students would haze them, threaten them, and all of this was allowed by the school. The biggest problem was the dramatic gap in academic performance between men and women, because women lived in an environment where they were afraid to speak up, and class participation was 50% of the grade. (Test scores, on the other hand, were comparable.)
Things finally changed when Harvard finally hired a female President for the first time ever. The school started holding things like "Hand Raising Seminars," teaching women how to be more assertive in class. When the school finally began to focus on equality and helping women feel safe and succeed, poof! The academic gap disappeared.
Harvard Business School Case Study: Gender Equity - New York Times
