Deborah Merrill Sands, dean of the Simmons School of Management - a business school designed especially for women - says she is asked all the time whether an all-women's MBA programme is necessary in an age where female executives have made so much progress climbing the ranks of corporate America.

Prof Sands has a ready answer: "Only 2 per cent of chief executive officers at Fortune 500 companies are women, only 16 per cent of corporate officers are women and only 8 per cent of top level staff," she says matter-of-factly. "We have not completed this work."