Gender diversity in leadership roles has been shown to have a positive impact on company performance. The report found that, in 2015, the Fortune 500 list included 45 healthcare companies, 11 percent of which had a woman in the role of chief technology officer or chief information officer.
The report also found that, since 2014, there has been a six-percent drop in the number of companies that have executive teams consisting of at least 25 percent women. However, since 2013, here has been a 50 percent rise.
Top Performers
Of
the top 10 healthcare companies on the 2015 Fortune 500 list, 70 percent have
at least one quarter of their board made up of women leaders and nine out of
ten have women in C-level positions not only in technology and information but
also human resources, marketing, communications and legal.
The top 100 Hospitals of 2015 have a 36 percent presence of women in executive leadership roles. Out of these, 17 received the prestigious Everest Award for highest current performance and fastest long-term improvement over five years. Only eight of the top 100 hospitals had a woman CEO, but 50 percent of these received the Everest Award.
See
also: Creating an Effective Workforce
“The diversity of the board plays an important role in improving the pipeline of talented and credible women who take on C-level roles. Sixty-three percent of the Fortune 500 healthcare companies have less than 25 percent of their board represented by women. This could be one of the underlying problems that is creating an inherent lag in the recruitment of women leaders in healthcare,” research fellow Diljot Chhina said in the report
Healthcare Lagging
Year-on-year,
2015 showed a better situation for women in executive positions in digital
health. Rock Health’s latest funding report in the sector showed that while men
continue to make up the majority of CEOs in funded digital health, women were
at the helm of 29 companies funded in 2015 representing double the amount than
in 2014.
In general though, the healthcare sector fares badly in comparison to the overall 5 percent of women in C-level roles in 2014 and 2015. “Unfortunately, this trend is not paralleled in the healthcare industry, as not enough women on executive teams are filling C-level roles,” Chhina said.
Rock Health is a venture fund that supports entrepreneurs working at the intersection of healthcare and technology.
Sources: Rock Health, HCI
Image source: BIA
