Not many of us would have heard of Hélène Ploix or Solange Perret, the first female students to graduate from INSEAD in 1968. Fifty years later, INSEAD is honoring them through a landmark, women diversity initiative, “50 Years, 50 Women, 50 Ideas” by celebrating women who are leading academic excellence and advocating gender diversity. It’s achieving this by promoting ideas of 50 women scholars who have been thought leaders in their academic fields.

The iW50 initiative aims to achieve several objectives through a series of events that kick-started in September 2017 and will culminate on June 29th, 2018. High on the agenda is increasing representation of women students at INSEAD. At present only 33% of the MBA class is comprised of women. There is a plan to offer more scholarships for women to swell their ranks.

With 2000+ published cases, INSEAD is at the forefront among business schools for its Case Publishing and the iW50 plans to leverage this expertise by publishing more women-centric cases.

Any dialogue on gender diversity has to be inclusive and should encourage male participation. The iW50 aims to achieve this by directly engaging with men on women’s issues.

INSEAD already has a number of student clubs that support women’s causes. The INSEAD Women in Business Student Club (iWiB)carries out ‘Women in Business Conference’ and ‘INSEAD Women in Business Mentoring Programme’ to create more opportunities for women. Manbassador comprises male students and teachers who take a stand to promote gender equality. The Women in Business Global Club consists of students and alumni of 13 club chapters across the world and works to connect global INSEAD alumni.

INSEAD’s deep commitment to gender issues is visible through a center of excellence dedicated to gender issues: the Gender Initiative aims to enable women and help them become leaders that can instigate change. The initiative engages with men as well as women for creating dialogue on gender parity, and also works with organizations for advancing their commitment to gender balance. Further, academicians – psychologists, sociologists, economists and management scholars – drive research on women’s impact on business and society.

In 1967, INSEAD became one of the first business schools to admit women into its MBA programme, making a strong statement about gender in the male-dominated MBA world. Fifty years on, a lot still needs to be achieved. According to an alumni survey carried out in 2017, 91% alumni wanted to work towards increasing the representation of women in high impact leadership positions.

By harnessing this change in mindsets, INSEAD can pave way for more and more women to become impactful leaders.