The world needs more women health leaders
When I was in India seven years ago, I spoke with several finance ministers who were in Delhi for a meeting of the International Monetary Fund. I said then that when women experiencing poverty are able to control their own finances, it can lift up not just them and their families — but whole countries. What could be more worthwhile than that?
Even then, India was ahead of the game. And it continues to show the world exactly what investing in women can do. Early in the pandemic, the government used digital bank accounts to send cash to 300 million people — including 200 million women — which protected them against the worst of Covid-19’s economic shocks. Too often, women don’t have control over their own money. When they have direct access to funds through digital accounts, it’s easier for them to save, get credit, and get insurance — all important steps toward getting women into the labour force and raising economic productivity.
From my point of view, making sure cash transfers get directly into women’s hands is a textbook example of gender-intentional policymaking — and of how to respond to the needs of a society’s most vulnerable women. That’s what India has been doing over the past few years: Building a more gender-equal country from the bottom up.
So, it’s only fitting that groups such as Womenlift Health are asking the next logical question: What about working from the top down? Policies such as emergency cash transfers may benefit women, but who’s designing them in the first place? In all sorts of institutions — governments, businesses, families — the face of power belongs to a man.
That’s true in almost every country and every sector. But it’s especially true in health. Women are the backbone of every health care system in the world, be it nurses, aides, and community health workers providing everything from neonatal care to cancer care. In India, women health workers were the heroes of the pandemic — getting people immunised and going door to door to test for Covid-19 and arranging treatment. Yet, 83% of doctors in this country are men. And who runs the hospitals? The research labs? Who makes the decisions about policy and priorities and budgets? Men.
That’s the case worldwide. Women make up 75% of the global health workforce — but only 25% of its senior leaders. The lack of women at the top has implications for every corner of the health system, from who participates in vaccine trials to how much funding goes toward diseases that primarily impact women. Decisions can’t only be made for women; they have to be made by women. It’s not just that women are more likely to promote the welfare of women. It’s also that when women are involved in decision-making, the decisions are better for society as a whole.
When I was writing The Moment of Lift ,I came across a study. It showed that groups that include at least one woman — just one — outperform all-male groups when it comes to collective intelligence tests. Of course, gender equality doesn’t mean just putting a woman on a corporate board or a government committee, no matter her qualifications. It means making sure that women have opportunities to show they’re qualified — and that they bring uniquely valuable contributions that can’t be found in a room filled only with men. Often this is made possible by women opening doors for other women. When Dr Manju Sharma became the first woman secretary of India’s department of biotechnology back in 1996, she was just getting started. She played a significant role in establishing scientific institutions across many disciplines, from plant genomics to DNA fingerprinting, and her example paved the way for many other women in science.
And, of course, before doors can be opened to women, they have to be opened for young girls. Mumbai-based neuroscientist Vidita Vaidya makes a point of going to schools and science camps to explain her research. So, it wasn’t surprising that when she won the Infosys Science Prize this year for her research on mood disorders, she said she plans to use part of her prize money on science and mathematics education for girls.
I met the Union minister of woman and child development, and minister of minority affairs, Smriti Irani, and dozens of impressive women who are government officials here, and I learned about some other ways in which the seeds of gender equality are being planted in India, which has made great progress toward designing a government and health sector that serve women well. Now my hope is that India will go even further, and make sure that policies aren’t just designed for women, but by them. It’s going to require advocates such as those in Union ministries, the department of biotechnology, and Womenlift Health to keep building leadership opportunities and support networks for women in health. It’s going to take the government, businesses, and non-governmental organisations to make sure that they include women in their leadership ranks. And it’s going to require society — all of us — to value women’s work, women’s ideas, and women’s power.
Doing so won’t just celebrate a few notable women who deserve fanfare. It will also show the rising generation of women — and leaders around the globe — what’s possible. And, it will prove that when given the opportunity, women can be so much more than afterthoughts in a broken world. They can and should be the architects of a better one.