Reimagining Healthcare

Lots of research, including some conducted by CTI, has found that talented women drop out more and more at each step up the management ladder.

Wanda Bryant Hope, chief diversity officer for Johnson & Johnson.

Build an inclusive culture. Leaders who embrace diversity and behave inclusively create the kind of culture where women come forward with solutions to drive engagement with the female marketplace. Identifying role models of inclusivity is a first step toward codifying, socializing, and rewarding the behaviors that create this “speak-up, listen-down” culture. An inclusive culture knows how to recognize and celebrate the power of difference. Talent management systems—from recruiting, to evaluations, promotions, job assignments and career development—need to become gender-smart. Women may need targeted support in order to fulfill their innovative potential.

Creating a culture where women feel empowered to share their insights doesn’t happen overnight. It takes commitment and consistent messaging across the organization. Leaders have to model inclusivity at every level of management. That said, inclusivity can be taught.

There are tangible steps companies can take to foster a “speak-up culture” that sustains innovation and increases revenue by encouraging and promoting ideas from the talent base that matches their biggest market: women.

The healthcare industry is an unfortunate example of insufficient diversity at the top: 78 percent of the healthcare workforce is female, but among the forty-five Fortune 500 healthcare companies, not a single one had a woman CEO in 2015 and only about 20 percent of their executives are women.51 Of the scores of venture-backed digital health start-ups that raised $2 million or more, only three are led by women.52 Women healthcare professionals are also segmented into lower-status specializations; for example, they comprise only 21 percent of surgeons.53

“Women always think there is more to learn. When they are under stress, they ask questions,” says John Gray, author of Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus and other books exploring gender differences that persist in contemporary society. “To men, asking questions is a sign of incompetence, and incompetence is failure.”

Online-sourced information may even undermine women in their quest for wellness. Many of the physicians we interviewed said “Dr. Google” can give patients and decision makers a false sense of certainty about their health. “It varies from patient to patient, but with the Internet, many patients are extremely well-informed before they walk in the door,” says OB/GYN Shireen Jayne. “They’ve already Googled their bladder problem, their hysterectomy, or whatever, and they’re certain they know the cause of their symptoms. I welcome their curiosity, but then I need to take a moment and re-educate them as to why they made the right or wrong assessment based on online information.”

Having studied viewers’ health outlooks and habits, Daboub can explain why Hispanics feel excluded from traditional sources of information. “Only three percent of US doctors are Hispanic,” he says. “More importantly, though, few physicians are culturally sensitive to Hispanic patients and what they’re looking for. Hispanic patients are very familial, very community-oriented; and women are absolutely the authority figures in their families when it comes to health.”

“If you need somebody to get something done, you ask a busy person,” says one CEO of a nonprofit and mother of five