Case Female Forum : Developing Women's Leadership Opportunities in Work Life

Abstract

The development of female leadership and entrepreneurship has evolved into an important theme around the world. This paper has two objectives. Firstly, we introduce a comprehensive training program called femaleForum, which combines education, development and research following the principle of lifelong learning. The program includes various modules which are designed to support the leadership and entrepreneurship opportunities of many different women. Secondly, based on an empirical interview study with 20 women, we discuss what kind of impact one of the modules in the program, a female MBA, can have on women’s attitudes and careers. The results show that the participants’ attitudes became more positive about an all-female group in leadership development. We discuss the reasons for this change. Several career changes–both horizontal and vertical–were also realized.