Women are unfortunately still largely underrepresented in healthcare leadership roles. In an effort to make progress, the Rock Health’s XX in Health initiative, created nearly four years ago, is continuing to call attention to the current reality of discrimination and consciously promoting diversity.
This is not just promoting diversity for the moral principle – women are an extremely valuable asset to a business, and the numbers show it, as the third annual The State of Women in Healthcare report indicates:
Having a diverse team creates a positive, virtuous cycle. Companies with women CEOs outperform the stock market, and companies with women on their boards outperform male-only boards by 26 percent. Researchers even estimate that transitioning from a single-gender office to an office evenly split between men and women be associated with a revenue gain of 41%.
Not only do companies with more women in leadership yield better economic returns, recent research also suggests it helps mitigate risk. One study shows that each additional female director reduces the number of a company’s attempted takeover bids by 7.6%. Another study indicates that companies with more women on their board had fewer instances of governance-related scandals such as bribery, corruption, fraud, and shareholder battles.
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The report doesn’t just highlight why diversity is entirely worthwhile, it also points out the current status of where women stand in the industry.
Despite making up more than half the healthcare workforce, women represent only 21% of executives and 21% of board members at Fortune 500 healthcare companies. Of the 125 women who carry an executive title, only five serve in operating roles as COO or President. And there’s only one woman CEO of a Fortune 500 healthcare company.
And, not surprisingly, the same problem crosses over into venture capitalism.
We know from our funding data that women make up only 6% of digital health CEOs funded in the last four years. When we looked at the gender breakdown of the 148 VC firms investing in digital health, we understood why. Women make up only 10% of partners, those responsible for making final investment decisions. In fact, 75 of those firms have ZERO women partners (including Highland Capital, Third Rock, Sequoia, Shasta Ventures). Venture firms with women investment partners are 3X more likely to invest in companies with women CEOs. It’s no wonder women CEOs aren’t getting funded.
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At the Abarca Forward conference earlier this year, George Van Antwerp, managing director at Deloitte, discussed how social determinants of health and a personalized member experience can improve medication adherence and health outcomes.
Tackling this issue and making improvements is a matter of awareness, and XX in Health is doing just that. It’s a problem that isn’t always a product of intent or conscious discrimination, but it continues to happen in a big way.
This week Rock Health is hosting a webinar on the topic for both men and women. Next week the sixth XX in Health Retreat in will take place in NYC.
