Gender neutrality in every sphere of work is the order of the day. In every domain of work, women are now assuming leadership roles and performing exceptionally well. Gone are the days when women were hardly a part of the productive workforce. In today’s world, the pace of progress largely depends on the women’s workforce as well.
However, the medical care sector has not been as responsive to women’s participation in leadership roles as the other domains. Even today, this sector has a negligible number of women heading departments and holding the top chairs. Many studies unfold this fact. Here is a study that particularly upholds the fact that women in the health care sector still struggle to hold the most responsible positions.
The outcomes of this study undoubtedly prove that the healthcare domain is not a friendly domain for women. Very few women are there in this domain with the designations like director, CEO, or chairperson. This trend unfolds how underrepresented women are in this particular sector.
The Data Of The Study
JAMA Network Open recently published a study to substantiate the diversity of women’s leadership representation in several bodies and organizations of the medical care sector. The research team chose the Health and Human Services Department of the U. S., the health insurance organizations, and other health systems.
They collected the data from the websites of these organizations directly. They particularly focused on the gender diversity of the people holding important positions in these organizations. Posts like the Board of Directors, senior executives, team leaders, etc., were the primary target of the research team.
The Study
The study checked the gender diversity pattern in health care leadership posts after going through the data collected from varied sources. These sources included 108 groups of health insurance, 161 different health systems, and 31 HHS leadership positions. No doubt the sample size was big enough to conclude unambiguously.
The researchers went through the data of 1303 senior executives from the health insurance sector and 3462 Boards of Directors from various health systems. The data also had 3911 senior executives from health systems and 1149 from health insurance organizations.
The Outcomes
After examining this huge volume of data carefully, the team of researchers found that men occupied 41.9% of the leadership positions in HHS. This accounted for almost 13 positions. Clearly, in this organization women have outnumbered men by a distinct margin with 18 positions. However, this alone does not prove gender equality across the health care sector.
Bismarck C. Odei (MD) belongs to Ohio State University’s James Cancer Centre. He as the first author along with his colleagues remarked that 17.5% of the BOD chairpersons in the health care sector are women. The team further mentioned that only 21.3% of the women hold the same position in health insurance organizations.
They also notified that health systems have 15.3% women CEOs and the health insurance organizations have 15.8% CEOs. No matter the way one looks at these data, the data appear equally skewed and worrying. So far as the BOD positions are concerned, the team found that health systems and insurance organizations have around 20% to 50% women representation.
The interesting finding of the team was that women lead organizations had more women in BODs and other leadership positions. The team concluded that in the U.S, women outnumber men both in population and healthcare workforce.
However, their underrepresentation in leadership posts reduces their power in policymaking. With fewer women capable of influencing the health policies, women’s health care stands every chance of taking a toll.
No matter the findings of the team, women’s participation should go up in the healthcare domain without any doubt. Besides gender equality, technology is another lateral that can be instrumental in deciding the fate of the health care service quality. At Sepstream®, we ensure that you get the perfect imaging solutions for flawless diagnosis. We keep our services varied and reasonably priced. Explore our range of software solutions to offer better health care at any time.