Who’s Professional? How and Why Women Are Key To Healthcare Leadership
Health panel at Take The Lead Power Up 2024 Conference: (L to R): Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, Heather Florio, Dr. DeShawn Taylor, Dr. Sophia Yen.
The Department of Education recently declassified nursing—plus physical therapy, audiology, physician assistance and more—as careers not deserving of the professional title. What that means is no longer will anyone seeking those degrees qualify for higher amounts on student loans. It also reinforces gender-biased hierarchy.
Women are the hardest hit and are paying for it--literally.
“Women are hardest hit by latest @DOE professional declassifications in #healthcare. 87% nurses identify as women. #nursing #leadership”
Healthcare is the largest employer in the U.S., with over 22 million workers. In that group, 87% of nurses identify as women, with men accounting for 11% of the registered nurse profession. There are 5.2 million registered nurses in this country and an estimated 2 million new jobs by 2030, the National Library of Medicine reports.
Of all healthcare providers, 79.9% are women, while 20.1% are men. As 80% work fulltime, 20% are part time workers. The largest percentage of workers is white at 35.6%, Black at 24%, Hispanic or Latino at 23.4% and Asian at 10.5%.
The call for equity action needs to start now to pushback against this sudden classification that sets new limits for federal student loans disbursed on or after July 1, 2026. It is further discrimination that puts women at a disadvantage in the healthcare and medical industry, where more women leaders are needed.
Read more in Take The Lead on healthcare inequity
“Healthcare needs strong, innovative leaders who can lead the field forward,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of Take The Lead. “While women are 80% of healthcare workers and earn 84% of bachelor’s degrees in the health professions, we are still a long way from gender parity in healthcare leadership.”
“Healthcare needs strong, innovative leaders who can lead the field forward,” says Gloria Feldt, co-founder and president of @TakeLeadwomen #healthcare #womensleadership #genderequity.”
Learn more about Take The Lead’s 50 Women Can Change The World in Healthcare
With the overwhelming majority of healthcare workers identifying as women, it is logical to identify this as a gender-based affront that affects millions economically and professionally.
Nursing World reports, “At a time when healthcare in our country faces a historic nurse shortage and rising demands, limiting nurses’ access to funding for graduate education threatens the very foundation of patient care,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, PhD, MBA, RN, NEA-BC, FAAN, president of the American Nurses Association. “In many communities across the country, particularly in rural and underserved areas, advanced practice registered nurses ensure access to essential, high-quality care that would otherwise be unavailable. We urge the Department of Education to recognize nursing as the essential profession it is and ensure access to loan programs that make advanced nursing education possible.”
“Limiting nurses’ access to funding for graduate education threatens the very foundation of patient care,” said Jennifer Mensik Kennedy, pres of @ANA. #healthcare #fairness #nursing ”
According to Newsweek, the result is that loans for “Graduate students would be capped at $20,500 a year and $100,000 total, while students in designated professional programs could borrow up to $50,000 a year and $200,000 total.”
Additionally, “Critics of the policy argue it effectively places higher financial burdens on some of the most essential but often lower-paid professions, many of which are staffed largely by women.”
A 2023 McKinsey Report on women in healthcare shows, “Healthcare continues to outpace other industries in the representation of women; however, women (especially women of color) remain underrepresented at senior levels in healthcare organizations.”
“Healthcare continues to outpace other industries in the representation of women; however, women (especially #WOC) remain underrepresented at senior levels in healthcare.” @McKinsey #healthcare #genderparity #leadership”
The report continues, “Women’s representation in healthcare remains high early in the pipeline, including in entry-level (75 percent), manager (70 percent), and senior manager or director (61 percent) roles, and has risen substantially compared with years past. But the representation of women drops in each successive career level to a low of 32 percent at the C-suite level.”
Promotion, retention and external hiring fall flat at senior management levels. The report finds a distinct lack of diversity, particularly in senior levels.
“Internal promotion rates for women in healthcare are lower than the average for women in all industries at every level. Men were promoted at higher rates than women into manager, vice president, and senior vice president roles.” Ironically, women were promoted at higher rates than men into senior manager or director and C-suite role, McKinsey shows, though in overall positions, women have lower promotion rates. .
“Internal promotion rates for women in healthcare are lower than the average for women in all industries at every level. Men were promoted at higher rates than women into manager, vice president, and senior vice president roles.” @McKinsey #promotion #Healthcare #women ”
Consider that finding: women promoted more fairly in all industries compared to healthcare. The pipeline stops before senior leadership for those identifying as women.
Read more in Take The Lead on bias against women in mediciine
Angira Patel, MD, a pediatric cardiologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, and assistant professor of pediatrics and medical education at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, along with Sarah C. Bauer, MD, a developmental pediatrician at Lurie Children’s Hospital and assistant professor of pediatrics at Northwestern, confirmed the bias, writing earlier in Take The Lead, “Despite their numbers, women hold a minority of leadership positions. Across all academic fields, 14 percent of department chairs are female. In pediatrics, with a higher percentage of female physicians, only 25 percent are female. Access to medical school isn’t the problem. Women now comprise 48 percent of medical school students in the United States.”
They write, “Experts have attributed this inequality to a variety of factors. These include a voluntary withdrawal from medicine (including academic medicine) or leadership positions, inherent power differentials and stereotypes that lead to decreased opportunities for leadership, and biological factors and responsibilities at home that foster the perception of decreased dedication. Women are entering academic medicine, but they are not staying long enough to reach leadership positions.”
A separate global research study looked into the negative experiences of women working in healthcare in 72 countries. “The review unpacked six types of adverse experiences (invisibility, disproportionate scrutiny, denial of opportunities, verbal abuse, physical abuse and sexual harassment.)” Additionally, “16 percent of women reported that when they spoke out against bias, they experienced retaliation.”
“Research of 72 countries show #inequality gap in #healthcare is severe as women experience #bias, retaliation and more when they speak out. @takeleadwomen https://gh.bmj.com/content/10/8/e016795”
The findings continue, “In healthcare, women of color make up almost a fourth of entry-level positions but occupy only 5 percent of C-suite ones. The attrition rates for women of color at the level of manager (28 percent) and senior manager or director (17 percent) are particularly alarming. Attrition among women of color at the entry levels will probably hurt representation at more senior levels in future years.”
The overt de-professionalizing of nurses spreads unofficially to female physicians. This is evident in public spaces such as conferences for medical professionals where women are introduced differently than men.
Take The Lead reported earlier that Dr. Julia Files,MD and Dr. Anita Mayer, MD, both Mayo Clinic physicians, conducted a study of 300 introductions at medical conferences. They “found that male introducers used professional titles 49 percent of the time with female doctors, but 72 percent of the time with men. Female introducers were more likely to use titles in general, but the result was still highly skewed by gender: titles were used 96 percent of the time with male doctors but only 66 percent of the time with female ones.”
“At medical conferences, “male introducers used professional titles 49% of time with female doctors, but 72% of time with men. @takeleadwomen #genderinequity #womenleadership #mediciine”
The latest federal declassifying of nurses as professional is a continuation on the spectrum of assigning invisibility to healthcare workers. This comes at a cost not just to the workers, but to patients and communities.
MedPage Today reports that, “Hospitals with inadequate nurse staffing experience two to three times higher rates of medication errors, hospital-acquired infections, and patient falls. Failure-to-rescue rates are up to 31% higher in poorly staffed hospitals. As nursing school admissions decline because loans are increasingly out of reach, negative patient outcomes, medication errors, and patient injuries will increase due to inadequate nursing staffing.”
The gender bias in healthcare leadership translates to gender inequity in treatment of patients. Speaking at Take The Lead’s Power Up 2024 conference, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, MD, CEO and founder of Adesso & Heart-Tech Health said. “What challenges the status quo ignites systemic change.”
“At PowerUp 2024, Dr. Suzanne Steinbaum, MD, CEO and founder of Adesso & Heart-Tech Health, said. “What challenges the status quo ignites systemic change.” #leadership @takeleadwomen #genderequity #healthcare ”
Dr. Shikha Jain, MD, Founder and Chair of Women in Medicine Summit, and COO of IMMPACT, is Associate Professor of Medicine, Director of Communication Strategies in Medicine, Department of Medicine, Associate Director of Oncology Communications & Digital Innovation, Department of Medicine, Division of Hematology and Oncology at University of Illinois. She writes in Take The Lead: “We consistently lose our best and brightest, and leadership isn’t reflective of the healthcare landscape, or populations we serve. Not because women aren’t resilient, bright, or ambitious, but because the path to success is paved with inequities that for many become too much to bear, or impossible to overcome.”
“Leadership isn’t reflective of the healthcare landscape, or populations we serve. Not because women aren’t resilient, bright, or ambitious, but because the path to success is paved with inequities that for many become too much to bear, or impossible to overcome.” @ShikhaJainMD @WIMSummit #leadersip #Medisine”
Jain continues, “To ascend in healthcare and address pervasive systemic inequities, it is necessary to learn tools for success, and use data and science to restructure the system from within. To make real change, we need a movement with solutions based on decades of data.”
Read more in Take The Lead on 9 Leadership Power Tools
The urgent needs for change in the healthcare hierarchy exacerbated by recent laws, align with the mission, offerings, trainings and resources of Take The Lead to establish gender equity across all industries.
“To make real change, we need a movement with solutions based on decades of data.” @ShikaJainMD #WIMSummit #leadership #parity #healthcare ”
Jain writes, “Closing the gender gap requires strategic partnership with male allies, combined with development programs to sponsor, mentor, and collaborate across silos. Only by fixing systemic inequities will we begin the work necessary to heal a broken system. We must lift colleagues from diverse backgrounds with intentional opportunities. Just because this is the way it has ‘always been’ in medicine, does not mean this is the way it must remain.”
