When it comes to women reaching leadership roles in health care, the data doesn’t paint a pretty picture.
Researchers at the Center for Policy and Research in Emergency Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University examined potential gender bias in leadership among emergency medicine and OB/GYN residency programs. With 1,634 residents in those areas completing the researchers’ survey, they found there is implicit bias towards as men as leaders in these programs.
“We picked a residency — in OB/GYN about 86 percent of residents are female and in ED, the majority are male — we intentionally picked two specialties that have different demographics. And even in OB/GYN where the majority of residents are female, there was a bias toward male leaders,” says Jeanne-Marie Guise, Department of Obstetrics & Gynecology at OHSU. “Sixty-one percent of males thought their gender was a benefit as leaders and only 7 percent of females thought the same. More than half of women thought their gender was harmful.”
Other research, from executive search firm Korn Ferry, found similar disparities. More than half (55%) of nearly 200 hospital and health system executives said women in their organizations have been overlooked due to gender. More than three-fourths do not have sponsorship programs to help women rise in the leadership ranks.
Why gender inequity persists
Carol Horowitz, MD, who is the founding Dean for Gender Equity in Science and Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York, the first person to take on this role at a medical school, has been through this struggle firsthand.
“When I was in training, I had some really horrendous experiences. I did my best to do something about it … but it didn’t make significant changes for my life as a trainee or my life around me,” Horowitz says. “In some ways, because women didn’t have as much power and much say in institutions over time, it was just hard to make significant changes.”
Horowitz says organizational efforts need to be in place for real changes to be made. At Mount Sinai, not only did leadership appoint her as the first-ever Dean for Gender Equity at a medical school, but the organization launched a racism and bias initiative, put together a gender equity accelerator, joined TIME’S UP Healthcare and initiated other strategies to change its culture.
Horowitz explains the creation of her role was something that Mount Sinai thought was necessary to give the issue prominence within the organization. “As we were looking around the institution, [the Dean of the Medical School] felt that elevating the work to the position of a Dean and having a Dean’s office focused on this would mean we had real attention, real resources backing it to understand our culture better and make significant changes at a greater pace than we had been doing,” Horowitz says.
[Read more: Fresh Perspectives from Outside the Health Care Bubble ]These moves come at a time when Mount Sinai is under intense scrutiny for how it treats women. In October, an article in New York Magazine took a critical look at the organization’s culture with regards to gender, age, and race discrimination and included an article about a patient who was molested by an ED doctor at the hospital. Mount Sinai insists the incident was one rogue actor that was immediately fired and also says it has put programs in place to empower women.
Mentoring future leaders
At Sinai Health System in Chicago, Karen Teitelbaum is making waves in promoting gender diversity in leadership roles. She says that 68 percent of managers and 66 percent of senior leadership at the health system are female. “When we look at hiring, when we look at diversity, I think we’ve done very well,” she adds.
Perhaps this is because Teitelbaum’s own career trajectory has been by her own accord, “non-linear and non-traditional.” A variety of bosses and mentors have helped her succeed. That’s why she serves as a mentor to women through the Essential Women’s Leadership Academy.
The academy was set up by the America’s Essential Hospitals organization on the basis of the incredible gender disparity in health care with the number of women working in the industry (80 percent, according to the Korn Ferry survey) vs. the number of women who are leaders (20 percent). The 10-month program, which has been around for six years, aims to help its hospital members close that gap by empowering women executives.
“This problem has been in place for a very long time. Many of our hospitals are working to close that gap with internal policies … but what hasn’t existed is a network of women leaders in essential hospitals who could be a cohort and learn from one another and get mentorship from other women leaders. This is about getting a mentorship from another essential hospital woman CEO and creating a cohort of women leaders who can band together,” says Kalpana Ramiah, Vice President of Innovation and Director of Essential Hospitals Institute, the research arm of America’s Essential Hospitals.
Not only did Teitelbaum become involved with this institute because she wanted to give back after having mentors of her own, but she also says the skills needed for leadership rarely get taught to women. She wanted to help change that.
“People get mentored on technical skills, but people don’t always talk to women early in their careers about those softer skills. They don’t talk to them about the politics. Everyone feels uncomfortable about money and advocating for themselves. They don’t talk about running a meeting. These aren’t technical skills, but they are important leadership skills,” Teitelbaum says. “Women in particular are not as conditioned to step into leadership as readily or as confidently as men might.”
