Summary: Women In Healthcare Leadership

“Although a majority of the healthcare workforce – 74% - is female, women continue to be significantly underrepresented in the top management of healthcare organizations.”
More than half of the graduates of health administration programs over the past 25 years have been female. Why aren’t there more women in the top management? Although women repre-sent a majority of the healthcare workforce, they are not represented at board levels. Women are more probable to be in the middle management. (Dunn, 2014)
“While the future for women in healthcare leadership looks bright, many women are currently struggling to reach the executive office, facing glass ceilings, competing priorities, and lack of access to support and guidance.” (Fontenot, 2012)
Women
in top management shouldn’t be perceived as not having a feminine side or requiring slipping into a masculine role but rather accepting the characteristics suitable in a healthcare leader. Only this way woman can overcome barriers and create a perspective for themselves and the well-being of organizations.
Conferring to Fontenot (2012) there are some traits typically seen as feminine like nurturing, multitasking, communicating, collaborating, balancing competing priorities or to be transpar-ent.
Nowadays these soft skills are essential to be a successful healthcare leader. (Madden, 2014)
All these high - potential women in medicine and nursing can be trained and developed for board levels. A recent study by two researches at Harvard Business School showed that wom-en were out of 16 competencies in 15 competencies better than men and that many of these characteristics would be needed traits for health leaders for example “displays high integrity and honesty”, “collaboration and teamwork” and “drives for results”. (Bradley,
2015)
• Men's leadership in healthcare
According to Joan Julia Branin (2009) men have spent a greater number of years in manage-ment positions. In contrast to women who begin their career in nursing or planning and mar-keting men begin their careers in general management, clinical services or financial services management. Therefore men have more training and education in health administration.
Additionally men are working more hours so they have an advantage in healthcare career ad-vancements. Women tend to leave the workforce for periods of time to care for family. "If you're looking at a track of continual advancement, sometimes working more hours brings more opportunity," Beeth says. (Crotty, 2008)
• differences “The difference between the way men and women conduct themselves during appraisals, says Barbara Young, is that women apologise for what they haven't done – and men tell you what they have done.” (Barbara Young, 2012)
Men are used to set the goals and make decisions.
They influence people to follow them and want to undertake the guidance. As opposed to this women are accustomed to try to please as this is taught them from birth. As a result women have the leaning to motivate, inspire and stimulate others to achieve organizational goals. Men perceive diverse factors to be more nec-essary and vital to career success than women.
Referring to Joan Julia Branin (2009) female healthcare executives are seen as nurturing while men’s leadership is perceived as confident. Women’s promotion prospects are inhibited. On the contrary men are seen as competitive risk takers who take more advantage of advancement opportunities.
These differences are magnificent issues in today’s health services. Diversity provides a com-petitive advantage in achievement and problem solving by involving different sides and views and by representing the interests of a wide range of people because this leads to greater cus-tomer satisfaction. The way of thinking come to be more creative and the bottom line
rein-force. “Although women will play a critical role in healthcare leadership in the coming years, they won't be alone in leading the field into the future. Hospitals and related healthcare organiza-tions with diverse leaders will be most successful in navigating the constantly changing healthcare landscape.” (Fontenot, 2012)