By Melissa Diaz Cabrera
In a school with a slight majority of female students and faculty members, there is one department that does not represent this – the economics and business department.
Economics and business is the second largest major at K, boasting 10.5% of all K graduates, according to The Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System as of 2022.
Of the ten faculty members within the department, half are female: Hannah Apps, Julia Cartwright, Amy MacMillan, Darshana Udayanganie, and Seong-Hee Kim. However, when describing how many women are present in their classes, a group of female professors identified an average of one table of female students.
“In graduate school, I was the only female of my year,” said Dr. Apps, a professor of economics at K since 1990. “The guys would get together and do homework and then I would be doing it by myself because nobody had invited me to be part of the homework groups, because why would they?”
Since Apps knows the effects of being in a male-dominated environment first-hand, she has altered the way she teaches her courses.
She has found that having a flipped classroom — where students learn the material outside of class and come to class to work on activities or groups — works against women and people of color. Therefore, she ensures material is learned in the classroom and discussions pertaining to market failures and power dynamics in the business world are talked about in her advanced classes.
While explaining the difficulties of creating a diverse classroom, Apps said, “How do you take people who come from very different backgrounds and how do you create an equitable, active learning environment for all of them?” She has found there to be difficulties in encouraging women and POC to be passionate for economics, entailing calculus and theoretic models, when there are tens of majors to elect at a liberal arts school. Apps went on to explain how students come to a liberal arts school to be passionate, and it’s hard to be passionate about a subject you may not have spent a lot of time discussing in high school or did not have the resources to fully explore.
Apps had one former female student, Maxine Koos ‘24, who also felt the male dominance in her classes. Koos is one of 16 graduating women in the business and economics department, out of 71 total graduates.
“In my non-business classes, gender representation is not a problem or a sight to be seen. In my businesses classes, it is rare to see more than three women and it causes an effect in every class aspect,” said Koos, a business and French graduate. “When there is the time and space to speak in class, it doesn’t feel or look like the majority of class is paying attention – majority meaning the men.”
Koos added, “The female professors in the econ/business department have always done a well job in making me feel supported in asking questions and feeling seen in classes.”
One of those female professors is Dr. Darshana Udayanganie, who has taught at K since 2022 and spoke to her experience as the only female graduate in her graduate program.
“Every batch, we had at least one female student, so I was friends with them. I still keep in touch with them, not the male students in my batch,” said Udayanganie.
“A year and a half ago I was teaching a statistics class and it was all male. Zero female students,” said Seong-Hee Kim, a visiting economics professor at K.
There is a growing number of women in business and economics, however. Apps, Udayanganie and Kim all shared that since their time in undergraduate and graduate years, there has been an increase of women in economics and business.
Although many female professors have only had a few female students in each class, Kim senses an improvement. “I am teaching money and banking where one third are female students, which is better than before. Before it was just one table of female students,” she said.
Among the resources the department has, the Professional Women’s Club is a club for women of all majors to network and progress themselves in the professional world.
According to Dr. Udayanganie, the next economics departmental student advisor will be Sage Lewis, a female economics major. Additionally, Alexa Wonacott will be the business department’s student advisor.
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