Where are the women leaders in health?

Where are the women leaders in health?

Healthcare organisations would benefit from understanding female physicians’ experiences in the workplace.

Female physicians continue to face myriad challenges in medicine, ranging from implicit bias to gaps in payment and promotion to sexual harassment, and while equal numbers of men and women graduate from medical school, only a small fraction of female physicians become medical leaders. In the US, only 3 per cent of healthcare CEOs are women, 6 per cent are department chairs, 9 per cent are division chiefs and 3 per cent are chief medical officers. Yet women comprise 80 per cent of the healthcare workforce. To achieve better representation of female physicians in leadership, there are four priority areas.

Quantification

Healthcare organisations need to see how well (or poorly) women are represented among their leadership. They’ll also benefit from understanding female physicians’ experiences in the workplace and how they compare to those of their male counterparts. Quantification is a key facilitator of change. A powerful example is the UK’s Athena Swan Charter and Awards, which recognises commitment to the advancement of women in higher education and research with bronze, silver or gold awards. As of 2011, organisations must have received at least silver to qualify for National Institute for Health Research funding. Evaluation suggests the Charter has increased awareness of gender and other diversity issues, created incentives for change, and catalysed structural and cultural changes, such as increased career support for female researchers.

Rethinking awards and promotions

Women physicians lag in the rates at which they receive major awards or recognition, which has an impact on promotions. Systematisation can ensure male and female faculty’s achievements are equitably recognised. Recent work from Brigham and Women’s Hospital highlights that gender gaps in recognition emerge early in careers, but that identification of and publicity about accomplishments can narrow those gaps. This lesson can be applied to systematising search processes, appointment to committees, and nominations for leadership roles.

Clinicians who conduct research get ahead faster.

Medicine has long valued and preferentially promoted clinicians who also conduct research. This can disadvantage female physicians, who are more likely to choose careers as clinician-educators, and doesn’t necessarily align with the skills needed for healthcare leadership. Several institutions have begun promoting for accomplishment in less traditional career paths.

For example, Duke has promotion tracks for faculty with clinical service and educational focuses. Similarly, the Dana Farber Cancer Institute each year names those among its most accomplished clinical faculty as senior and institute physicians.

Engaging broadly

There is substantial data on the pervasiveness of implicit bias in STEM fields, and medicine in particular. Implicit bias training has been shown to decrease negative beliefs about women’s capabilities in STEM. Engaging men alongside women in efforts to reduce bias has proved powerful. At Dell, for example, the Men Advocating Real Change program engages men as key allies in driving gender equity. Targeted at the largely male executive leadership, the program is run by the non-profit group Catalyst, and covers topics such as privilege, unconscious bias, dominant culture, and gender role conditioning and its link to leadership. Feedback suggests it is having a positive effect on Dell’s ability to recruit, retain and promote women and on the gender balance in male-dominated divisions.

Development and sponsorship

Both male and female leaders should take on sponsorship roles to promote high-potential women’s access to opportunities, and to avoid the problem of female leaders becoming overburdened with mentee requests. IBM’s Technical Women Pipeline Program pairs mid- and senior-level women identified as strong leadership candidates with executive advocates with whom they work on development plans and check in on a quarterly basis. Women also join quarterly international calls with others in the program, which has improved retention rates and increased the number of women considered distinguished engineers.

Lisa S. Rotenstein, MD, is a resident physician at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a Clinical Fellow at Harvard Medical School.

© 2018 Harvard Business Review. Distributed by the New York Times New Service