"The Gender Gap in European Business Schools: A Leadership Perspective" is a research project initiated and funded by EFMD, EQUAL, and the business schools represented on the project’s Steering Committee with following motivations for the study:

Numerous studies by policy makers and academics have documented the existence of a faculty gender gap in Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), which starts at the bottom of the academic hierarchy at the Ph.D. level and grows wider at each succeeding stage in the academic career path. As of 2013, women still represented less than 30% of grade A academic staff (the highest positions in the academic hierarchy) in HEIs in the vast majority of EU member states. In thirteen EU countries, women represented less than 20% of grade A academic staff. Business schools are no exception to this pattern. The average proportion of all full-time female faculty – not just senior professors – employed by the top 85 business schools on the Financial Times 2015 European Business School Rankings is 33%. It is even less than that (23.3%) at the top 10 business schools on the list.