Becker's Hospital Review

58 WOMEN'S LEADERSHIP 10 numbers that show how gender gaps keep women out of the C-suite By Hannah Mitchell E ven with initiatives to shrink the gap between male and female executives, women are still far behind. Here are 10 numbers that illustrate how gender gaps keep women out of the C-suite: 1. Only two health systems ranked in the top 20 hospitals by U.S. News & World Report are helmed by a woman, highlighting how few female leaders are showcased at the top in healthcare. 2. Even though female executives are sparse among healthcare ranks, 26 percent of its executives are women. It's among the highest of any industry, alongside finance and retail. 3. Female executives are concentrated in C-suite roles like chief human resource offi- cer positions (where 55 percent are women) and chief marketing officers (36 percent), Investopedia reported. 4. At Fortune 500 companies, just 1 in 13 companies is led by a woman. In total, 37 companies have a woman as CEO, which is the highest number of women leading a top company in American history. 5. Women comprise nearly half of entry-level jobs, yet are less common higher up the cor- porate ladder, according to a July 28 Investo- pedia report. 6. One reason there are so few female CEOs is that the pipeline is shrinking, IBM found. e number of women in roles that lead to exec- utive positions has been declining since 2019. Stanford researchers found women make up just 13 percent of the leadership pipeline, In- vestopedia reported. 7. Another factor is that women are hold- ing fewer seats at the top MBA programs than their male counterparts. It took the Wharton School of the University of Pennsyl- vania in Philadelphia 140 years to welcome a class with more women than men, the first of any elite program. 8. Even women who make it to the top en- counter challenges that may weigh on their tenure. ree out of 4 female executives re- ported feeling imposter syndrome at some point in their career, a study by consulting firm KPMG found. 9. Women also receive less leadership transi- tion support than men. Men are 13 percent more likely to receive leadership skills train- ing than women and are 22 percent more likely to be assigned a formal mentor. 10. Perceptions on what makes a good leader are also skewed by gender role assumptions. Female leaders are oen plagued by sexist ste- reotypes that label them "too emotional" for leadership. To be deemed an effective leader, they have to limit themselves to three emo- tions: cheer, calm and pride. n Innovation to solve problems: Geisinger's strategy for healthcare transformation By Laura Dyrda K aren Murphy, PhD, RN, executive vice president and chief innovation and digital transformation officer for Geisinger in Danville, Pa., joined the Becker's Healthcare podcast to talk about innovation amid the pandemic and how technology improves healthcare delivery. Below is an excerpt of that conversation. Question: How is Geisinger thinking about innovation today, and what's on the horizon? Dr. Karen Murphy: At Geisinger, we don't innovate for the sake of innovation. We innovate to solve problems. The healthcare industry has a lot of problems to solve, but we try to remain focused on true transformation. Successful in- novation is really hard to do because it's hard to move the needle on cost and quality, but we're really trying to focus on developing transformational care models that produce measurable results where we can actually demonstrate we've made a difference in cost and quality. Q: Where have you seen success with innovation, and what are the new projects you're planning? KM: We're accelerating what we were working on be- fore the pandemic and concentrating on where we can be impactful. One of those areas is chronic disease man- agement, or developing new care models for chronic dis- ease patients taking a really holistic approach. Historically, we've always looked at a patient who is diabetic and pre- scribed one way of managing care. We manage patients with COPD another way and hypertensive another way. We're now trying to look at the whole patient and devel- op strategies of leveraging technology, patient-reported outcomes, artificial intelligence and machine learning to figure out how we stay closer to our patients versus the episodic, once-a-month call or visit to the physician. We want to leverage technology to stay closer to patients so we can actually prevent exacerbation of disease requir- ing a higher level of care or progression of disease and really improve patient outcomes in that way. n Men are 13 percent more likely to receive leadership skills training than women.

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