Becker's Hospital Review

25 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP Female healthcare executives less satisfied with pay, job than male peers, report finds By Morgan Haefner M ale and female healthcare executives have varying perceptions of their workplaces, highlighting a continued need to address gender biases in the C-suite, according to a special report published in the Journal of Healthcare Management. e report analyzes results from a 2018 Amer- ican College of Healthcare Executives survey on the attitudes of male and female healthcare executives, and compares them with data from earlier surveys on the same topic. For the 2018 survey, 670 men and 726 women responded to the survey, which was sent to ACHE members. Four findings from the 2018 study: 1. Eighty-seven percent of male healthcare ex- ecutives and 81 percent of female healthcare executives said they were satisfied with their position. e 2018 survey was the first time that the percentage of women reporting job satisfaction was significantly lower than men. 2. When looking back at their past five years of employment, 42 percent of women said they didn't get paid fairly due to gender. Only 2 percent of men said the same, according to the report. 3. Seventy-one percent of women said they were satisfied with how their compensation compared with their peers', while 81 percent of men said the same. 4. Seventeen percent of women said they felt they missed out on a promotion because of their gender in the past five years, compared to 4 percent of men who said the same. How- ever, the percentage of women who felt they weren't promoted because of their gender in 2018 is down from 33 percent in 1995. n Female voices are missing from global COVID-19 news coverage, study finds By Mackenzie Bean G lobal media coverage on COVID-19 is signifi- cantly lacking the voices of female scientists, physicians and health experts, reported The Washington Post. The Post cited a recent report from the Bill and Me- linda Gates Foundation, which looked at mainstream COVID-19 coverage in the U.S., the U.K., Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria and India. The report found women were four times less likely to be featured as experts or com- mentators in media coverage. On average, there were at least three male interviewers for every female one featured in a COVID-19 story, according to the study. "The pandemic exacerbated the lack of women's voic- es," Dr. Muge Cevik, an infectious diseases and medi- cal virology researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, told the Post. "It just reinforced the prevail- ing gender norm in which men continue to be allocat- ed to leadership roles, speaking to media." Several female scientists also told the publication that women who are vocal on media outlets often face on- line harassment or doubts about their expertise. This marginalization of women's voices reinforces gender stereotypes that men are more reliable during crises, the Gates Foundation study said. It also may in- fluence policymakers' COVID-19 responses, meaning issues or interests that are important to women may be placed on the back burner, reported the Post. n Gender pay gap set to close in 39 years By Molly Gamble T he projected deadline for equitable pay between men and women remains the same as it has for the past four years — 2059 — meaning the rate of progress toward closing the gender pay gap did not accelerate in 2019, ac- cording to The Institute for Women's Policy Research. Working women can be prepared to say "maybe next year" 39 times — "maybe" because the forecast of 2059 is no sure thing. It assumes the rate of change in the annual earnings ratio will continue at the same rate as it has since 1960. Working women earned 73.5 cents for every dollar a working man earned in 2019, including part-time and part-year work- ers. Full-time, year-round working women earned a median of 82.3 cents for every dollar that a full-time, year-round working man earned. Gender pay gaps are even more pronounced between the earnings of women of color and white men. On average, His- panic women earned 55.4 cents for every dollar earned by white men, and Black women earned just 63 percent of white men's median annual earnings. These 2019 disparities are aligned with those that all women faced through the 1960s and 1970s, when the earnings ratio hovered between 57 and 61 cents to the dollar of male earnings, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The median annual earnings of white women were 78.7 percent of white men's in 2019, and Asian women's were 87.1 percent. The Institute for Women's Policy Research notes that persistent earnings inequality by gender, race and ethnicity affects not just the current generation of workers, but their children and the next generation. "Closing the wage gap is not a zero-sum game — gains for one gender do not require losses for the other," the nonprofit noted in its fact sheet. n

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