If you are a female in the School of Management and are planning to become a career woman, you may have your work cut out for you. Literally.

Gender-based issues clearly make it harder for females to succeed in the business world, according to Candida Brush, the director of The Council for Women’s Entrepreneurship and Leadership. Brush is teaching a new undergraduate level course on women’s entrepreneurship and leadership, which she hopes will arm women with the tools to get ahead in male-dominated companies.

While Boston University, Wellesley College and Simmons College all have women’s studies programs that focus on gender studies, Brush said her course caters specifically to businesswomen.

‘We are trying to teach it from a management perspective,’ Brush said. ‘What are the policies that companies have? How do you change these policies? And if you are a woman, what kinds of personal skills do you need to have?’

The course is part of the curriculum for The Entrepreneurship Management Institute’s new undergraduate entrepreneurship concentration and examines the various roles of women within business organizations.

In the course, Brush discusses a number of issues that affect women in business, such as occupational segregation, labor economics, promotion and retention and hiring.

While it may not be as difficult for women to attain jobs in business right out of college, Brush said it is clearly more difficult for them to climb the corporate ladder.

‘If you look at the numbers of women on senior boards or corporate positions, the numbers are small,’ Brush said. ‘Getting jobs in decision making is harder.’

‘There are still some companies that are the big boy network and do have some anti-women issues,’ said Shannon Bolton, a senior in SMG and one of 10 students enrolled in Brush’s class.

Brush said the lack of women in high-ranking positions makes it more acceptable to continue to shut them out.

‘It’s more difficult for women to get into certain industries because there are fewer women in those industries,’ Brush said. ‘For instance, venture capital. There are less than 10 percent of women in that [field]. It’s kind of a closed network, but it may be that just a lot of women don’t want to go into that field to. It could be a choice.’

In one of her classes, Brush and her students chose to examine women’s roles in a random sampling of ten companies.

‘The only company that had a significant number of women in decision making roles was Avon [cosmetics], with 40 percent,’ Brush said.

Brush said her class teaches women how to kick the door down and acquire a decision making position within a large company. Brush also discusses how policies can be changed and created by women, for women.

‘Policies for childcare and policies for maternity leave affect men and women differentially,’ Brush said. ‘If you happen to be the entrepreneur, you are in the position of creating the positions, so you can have people bring children to work if you want to.’

Bolton said she thinks balancing family life and a career is the most challenging issue women face today. When women do reach the executive level, responsibilities such as children, could contend with their work, and threaten their position.

‘A big concern a lot of girls in the class have is having children and also being a career woman,’ Bolton said. ‘It’s almost like you can’t both be a successful woman and a successful mother.’

Brush said her course teaches entrepreneurs-in-training how to be sensitive to the needs of women in the workforce and on a more personal note, teaches women how to manage their executive roles and family’s needs.

‘There are issues that do effect women’s ability to succeed in leadership roles,’ Brush said. ‘If you want to have a family and you want to be a CEO, you have personal dilemmas you need to think about.’

In order to encourage students, Brush has brought in several guest lecturers to discuss their personal experiences, such as Mary Gardner, who does organizational developmental consulting for Fortune 500 companies, and Christine Duvivier, a senior executive at Digital Computer Company.

‘I thought that if you look at women that do have a lot of clout in a company, they probably don’t have a big family life, but it is possible,’ Bolton said. ‘Christine Duvivier told us how she did it. She was working as a director and they wanted her so badly that she positioned herself so that she was working only three days a week.’

Brush said it is important to educate women on the possible obstacles they may face and prepare them in advance.

‘[The class] gives us a forum in which these issues can be discussed,’ she said. ‘This is really an opportunity to empower women to succeed.’

Women are also given the opportunity to network with other female entrepreneurs through events organized by The Council For Women’s Entrepreneurship and Leadership.

‘I love the course,’ Bolton said. ‘It has raised my awareness about being a woman in the business world. I don’t think being a woman is a negative anymore. We do have a lot more opportunities.’

Shalu Umapathy, a senior in SMG and a student in the course, agreed that women’s opportunities have increased dramatically over the past two decades. She said today’s business world is much more tolerant and open to change. She is not scared to enter into it, partly because of the new knowledge she has gained in the class.

‘The greatest benefit of the class is getting a sense of confidence that even if we are not sure about what kind of field we are going into, our gender will not prohibit us from succeeding,’ Umapathy said. ‘If a company is going to be sexist toward me then I don’t want to be working for them anyway.’