Shaping tomorrow

Today’s leaders are building a stronger, more inclusive future for the industry

Research shows that companies with more women in leadership roles are rewarded with greater innovation, stronger performances and healthier cultures. Pharma’s impact on world health makes the need for more balanced gender representation within our sector more consequential.

The pharma industry tends to have a higher female workforce than other sectors. According to McKinsey, more than half of new entrants to pharma in 2022 were women. However, this has not translated to equality higher up in organisations, where women account for around 25–30% of the C-suite.

It’s important that we communicate to younger women and girls about the fulfilling careers that are open to everyone in the pharma industry. Today’s generation of women in pharma is ambitious and talented, benefiting from having women role models and sponsors to support its goals.

Getting buy-in and sponsorship from men is crucial to advancing women to leadership roles. This benefits everyone by boosting job security through better employer performance, and by normalising a healthier work-life balance and parental leave.

Progress has been made but we still have a way to go. There are two key elements to achieving balanced representation in boardrooms: the individual and the organisation.

We must provide women with the tools, skills and confidence to maximise their opportunities. This includes providing mentorship, coaching and career development programmes. At the same time organisations need to ensure they deconstruct systemic barriers and facilitate career growth for all employees.

The next challenge lies in ensuring that there are no obstacles en route to the boardroom and organisations focus on fair and equitable processes where all employees can thrive and progress.

In our organisation we have core leadership programmes in place to support career growth, including our senior leadership development programme. This is an intensive, high-potential development programme designed with input from our CEO and leadership team.

Participation is based on merit, with individuals being selected to attend based on a history of strong performance and potential to progress to more senior roles.

The programme consists of career development discussions with senior leaders, skills workshops, business simulations, mentorship and coaching, and action learning sets. Sustained initiatives like this are necessary to build on the progress achieved so far.
Aside from changes within pharma companies, it’s important that we increase the representation of female participants in clinical trials when scientifically and clinically relevant to produce trial-level efficiency as well as generalisable safety and efficacy data.

Women in low-income countries are often disproportionately burdened by diseases. They are most often the primary caregivers to patients or must manage their own underdiagnosed, under-researched conditions.

In the past there has been a lack of data about women’s responses to treatments and limited understanding of how differently symptoms present in women and men, which has exacerbated the issue since clinical trials require a single set of eligibility criteria to be met that may not have considered these emerging differences.

Closing this gap in scientific knowledge will help future generations to find new treatments and move us in the direction of everyone having the potential to achieve their best possible health with societal and workplace benefits for all.

It’s gratifying to see the progress made for women in pharma since my career began and I’m optimistic that we will see further gains in the future.

References

Badal S. The Business Benefits of Gender Diversity. Gallup. 2014. gallup.com/workplace/236543/business-benefits-gender-diversity.aspx. Published 20 January. Accessed 8 April 2024.
O’Brien I. Taking Women to the Top of Pharma. In: London: European Medical Journal; 2024: emjreviews.com/emj-gold/article/taking-women-to-the-top-of-pharma/
Iyer JK. From the boardroom to the consulting room, we need women in pharma. 2020. weforum.org/stories/2020/03/pharma-healthcare-curing-gender-bias/. Accessed 7 April 2024.
Evan D. Gumas, Munira Z. Gunja, and Reginald D. Williams II, “The Unequal Weight of Caregiving: Women Shoulder the Responsibility in 10 Countries: Findings from the Commonwealth Fund 2023 International Health Policy Survey,” To the Point (blog), Commonwealth Fund, Mar. 19, 2024. https://doi.org/10.26099/85gj-hx68
Wilczewski CM, Obasohan J, Paschall JE, Zhang S, Singh S, Maxwell GL, Similuk M, Wolfsberg TG, Turner C, Biesecker LG, Katz AE. Genotype first: Clinical genomics research through a reverse phenotyping approach. Am J Hum Genet. 2023 Jan 5;110(1):3-12. doi: 10.1016/j.ajhg.2022.12.004. PMID: 36608682; PMCID: PMC9892776.