Despite making up more than half of the healthcare workforce, women are vastly underrepresented in leadership roles in the industry, with the digital health sector most lacking in gender parity, according to a new Rock Health report.
In 2019, women made up about 37 percent of the executives at the nation's 100 largest hospitals and 24 percent of executives and 26 percent of board members at Fortune 500 healthcare companies, per the report, but fewer than 13 percent of partners at venture funds active in digital health are women. Additionally, women-led digital health startups have been involved in only 14 percent of deals closed this year.
Furthermore, each of those rates has moved only incrementally since 2017, according to Rock Health.
In a survey of healthcare startup and venture capital workers included in the report, about three-quarters of male and female respondents predicted their workplaces will achieve gender parity within the next 25 years. However, according to the report's projections, even if 50 percent of all new healthcare venture capital partners hired are women, it will be nearly a century before they make up even 45 percent of the industry, and it would take more than 70 years for the top healthcare companies' boards and executive teams to reach that threshold.
"Despite the harsh math for leadership roles across the healthcare industry, the digital health sector in particular is (slightly) closer to achieving a balanced gender ratio than other industries. Healthcare VCs, for example, employ 13 percent women partners compared to the overall VC average of just 10 percent," the report's authors note.
View the full report here.