Women in Healthcare: Of Leaky Pipes and Sluggish Middles

Corporate America is not on a path to gender equality, which, even purely economically speaking, is a matter of considerable urgency. These findings are based on a recent Women in the Workplace survey McKinsey conducted in partnership with LeanIn.org — involving 30,000 employees surveyed and data from 118 companies of which 10 are from the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries — to better understand the context and the path to gender equality. Healthcare vs. Other Sectors Relative to other sectors such as automotive and industrial, and electronics/technology hardware, the healthcare sector in the US fares better both in accessing talent and representation of women at every level of the organization, based on our research. For example, while the automotive & industrial sector has only 16% women in mid-management (e.g., Manager to VP) and electronics/technology has only 21%, the healthcare sector has 47% women at this level.  But healthcare falls to the bottom quartile for women in likelihood of advancement, especially at the VP and SVP levels (but, interestingly, not in the move from SVP to the C-Suite, where healthcare ranks high, as illustrated in the third finding, below). There is a slowness of advancement in the middle management ranks, a “sluggish middle,” that exists – which is similar to other sectors with high representation of women, like retail/CPG, hospitality and financial services. Following are four stark findings about the healthcare s...
Source: Disruptive Women in Health Care - Category: Consumer Health News Authors: Tags: Policy Source Type: blogs