Are men called Michael still in the lead over women CEOs at JPM 2020?

The Healthcare Business Women's Association (HBA) held the first women-only panel at the J.P. Morgan 38th Annual Healthcare Conference (JPM 2020) in San Francisco on January 13th, 2020. The panelists of executives were asked to share their business perspective and speak to the low representation of senior women executives and CEOs in the industry. 

The panelist of five included Corinne Le Goff, Senior VP, General Manager US General Medicine Amgen; Elizabeth Otterman, Managing Director, Accenture Management Consulting - Life Sciences; Cynthia Burks, Sr.VP Human Resources, Genentech; Sophie Jones MD, Principal, Centerview Partners; Melissa Masterson, VP Market Access, MyoKardia; and Anita Bose, Chief Client Growth Officer, W2O highlighted important trends in the industry and identified critical initiatives needed to continue to advance women in healthcare, biotech, and life sciences industries. 

The following are the key points from the panelist that underscore the critical need to advance women in the healthcare industry in the United States and Europe. 

• Continuing effort needed to achieve gender parity in senior executive positions across healthcare, life sciences, financial, and retail industries. 
• In life sciences, 50% of the workforce is female, but only under 20% are in key executive positions, and boards only have 10% female representation. 
• In the healthcare sector, 80% of the workforce is female, yet less than 20% are in key executive positions. 
• Access to innovation is a global issue and a cornerstone of the healthcare industry seeking to improve patient care and patient outcomes. Studies show that diversified and inclusive workplaces drive innovation. 
• A key component to enhancing diversity and inclusion is more flexibility around workplace arrangements, which increases the talent pool vital for the growth of organizations
• Build a culture to embed diversity and inclusion to establish ways to work together building trust enabling the open, direct and specific discussions needed to improve patient care.
• Diverse populations must be included in the clinical trials to reflect the various communities. As Katherine Liu et al. stated in their 2016 paper in PharmPract that clinical trials have not always adequately enrolled women or analyzed sex-specific differences in the data. These deficiencies have hindered the progress of understanding women's response to medications and have created a bias in the data collected. 
• 2019 has been a record-setting year for M&A. For 2020, it is likely that investors will continue to support this trend to drive growth.
• Machine learning, AI and data driven analytics companies have started to partner with biotech, pharma and diagnostics companies to form partnerships that will help drive innovation 
• There is a convergence of technology in the healthcare industry and it is important to educate individuals and patients to ensure that this information is leveraged and used.  
• Innovation is continuing rapidly shortening the product life cycle and time of exclusivity. Current business models are not applicable for many of these new therapies. A paradigm shift relating to pricing and platforms that provide patient access is needed, which requires partnering with legislators and regulators to drive necessary changes. 
• Women CEOs and executives should readily accept responsibility and willingly mentor and support other women enabling their career progression and ultimately through this support achieve gender parity.

The comments from the HBA panelists parallel recently published reports that call for an increased representation in the C-Suite - the next frontier after addressing the pay-gap. 

"Increasing women's representation in the C-suite is not a quick fix," said Tracy Bosch, Associate client partner at Korn Ferry. "The hurdles in advancing women are multi-dimensional, laced with unconscious bias, and very hard to unravel."

Throughout history, successful companies, thriving economies, and prosperous communities have been characterized by their openness to diverse ideas and their commitment to inclusion. Yet despite progress in many areas, the evidence shows that there is much more work to be done, particularly in achieving true gender equality in all levels of business. It is widely accepted that the full inclusion of women executives improves a company's financial performance. Despite this fact and that a majority of organizations have a formal senior leadership inclusion initiative in place, the data continues to show that the number of women in these positions is still significantly low. This is particularly prevalent in the healthcare industry. 

Although progress has been made in advancing women to positions of power in corporate America, women remain vastly underrepresented in the C-suite and on corporate boards. According to research from Heidrick & Struggles, men hold 93% of the CEO positions in United States companies. That percentage increases to 95% when examined across a sample size of 13 European countries. Research from ISS Analytics painted a similar picture, finding that the rate of female directors is 24% in the US, though there have been some advances in this regard.

 In the European Union, some countries have legislation mandating more women on boards, as has California, recently requiring at least one female on each board of directors. But it remains a work in progress.

Ambitious organization-wide diversity programs have had limited success, primarily because they are not tailored to particular circumstances and lack serious support and commitment from top management.

"Traditional diversity and inclusion programs only scratch the surface of what it takes to help women advance because they focus on the individual level," said Margaret Morrison, Principal, Americas Leader of Business Development, Brand, Marketing & Communications for EY Financial Services and a CED Trustee. "Organizations need to break down the stereotypes and recognize that embracing diversity and inclusion is good for business."

Is the development of female leaders a priority?

The key to success is changing the mindsets of both leaders and employees and embedding diversity and inclusive practices into all aspects of the business.  

"There are many reasons for the lack of women at the top, and these range from gender bias and discrimination to whether organizational cultures are rigid or flexible," says Marianne Cooper, a Stanford University sociologist and lead researcher for the book Lean in: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead by Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg. "With social problems, there's never one real smoking gun. If there were, we would be solving them faster than we are."

The Fortune Knowledge Group Report (Developing-Advancing-Female-Leaders) states that nearly 70% of respondents say their organization pursues an explicit women's talent strategy, with strong support across the board and high-profile efforts to support an inclusive, high-performance culture. But surprisingly, few executives indicate that their company has translated these policies into actions. 

Less than half of women surveyed in the report stated that:

• Their firms employ transparent, gender-neutral hiring criteria.
• Have transparent processes for identifying high potential candidates.
• Offer maternity leave beyond legal minimums (paternity leave ranks lower still).
• Track gender diversity at key career milestones.

"There is a main reason why gender diversity initiatives either fail or come up short, and that's because they tend to be really limited in scope," says Stanford University's Cooper. "They are failing to address gender and equity in a comprehensive manner, because there are so many different factors at play."

The reason for this may lie in deep-rooted corporate cultures, says Deborah Gillis, president and CEO of Catalyst. "Both legislative protection for women's rights and workplace policies – like flex hours, paternity leave, and on-site childcare, are necessary but not sufficient for success – and that brings us back to organizational culture. It is one thing for an organization to have a flexible work policy; it's another thing if that organizational culture discourages both women and men from taking advantage of those policies."

Fortune's survey shows that human capital management isn't a top priority. It ranks below objectives like customer relationship management and financial management. And even within leadership development strategy, only a fourth of the firms represented in the survey showed cultivating senior women leaders as a top priority. 

 "I think society has, for centuries, trained us to think in certain ways about women and girls. It will take a long time, and it will take a persistent effort to overcome those innate biases." – Anne Richards, CEO, M&G Investments

Changes in mindset are needed to drive change for women

Women face a magnitude of the obstacles at each stage of their careers. Nearly three in four respondents say that female applicants face "somewhat significant" or "very significant" hurdles and impediments. 

"We've moved from overt discrimination to some hidden barriers," says Anne Richards, CEO at M&G Investments. "I think society has, for centuries, trained us to think in certain ways about women and girls. It will take a long time, and it will take a persistent effort, to overcome those innate biases. The gender pay gap is one example, obviously, but there's been some research that shows that women are less likely to get promoted or to take longer to get promoted at each step in a management hierarchy. That means they progress to the top more slowly."

Executives generally recognize that changes in mindset are among the improvements that need to be made, especially concerning work-life balance and fostering leadership traits in qualified female candidates. Bluntly put, there's only so much an organization can do to attract and retain women leaders. Beyond a certain point, people's personalities and lifestyle choices may influence their career advancement.

For example, the world of finance is perceived as aggressive and uncompromising. A challenging environment like this may tend to put off women candidates. In highly demanding industries such as this, and depending on personal circumstances, the role of a spouse may be an old-fashioned one: one partner stays home.

Another lifestyle choice is the willingness or ability to accept transfers to different geographical locations. Top management may not offer a transfer to a woman because they believe she won't accept a lifestyle disruption. The point is not whether this is true, but that female executives should be given the opportunity to take the transfer or turn it down.

Key strategies that organizations can implement to increase the number of female executives include:

• Establishing an explicit women's talent strategy with strong support from the top. 
• Supporting the promotion of female executives through advocacy and sponsorship by Senior Executive Leaders
• Enhancing the flexibility of the workplace: 70% of organizations discourage flexible work arrangements. This flexibility is crucial to enable women leaders.

Ultimately, senior leaders are rewarded not for good intentions but results. If key leaders are given specific financial or other targets, and rewards if they meet those targets, they are much more likely to make active efforts to develop and advance women leaders – and to achieve corporate goals for financial performance.

"I'm optimistic for women because if you look at the world going forward, technology has enabled jobs to be much more portable. That means we now have a much greater competition for talent. Talent will reach out beyond geography."

 – Jennifer Johnson, Co-President, COO, Franklin Resources Inc.

What can women do to take control of their career advancement?

At the 2018 JP Morgan conference, there were more men named Michael (22) than female CEOs (20) presenting their companies. The 2020 JP Morgan statistics are most likely not very different. Despite the advances made across industries, numbers of women in senior executive or CEO roles are only growing slowly or stagnant. Women continue to face many challenges when they want to advance their career to reach senior executive levels.

 Efforts like the ones suggested by the HBA panel are imperative to not only change the environment for women, but lay the foundation for innovation, increase the talent pool and achieve much needed improvements in patient care and access to treatments. Women seeking to advance and lead organizations can't rely solely on organizational initiatives, a new mindset or a change in business culture. Women need to equip themselves with the best tools and strategies to take control of their careers. 

Join us for an online discussion around focusing on crucial strategies women should be embracing and putting into action to take control of their career advancement on February 12th, 2020. To participate register here or contact Martina Wagner, Ph.D. for more information and details for participation. 

To find out how you can tap into your Physical Intelligence to take active control of your mind and wellbeing check out "An Introduction to Physical Intelligence" available on Amazon.

About the Author

Dr. Martina Wagner the cofounder of ArtesHumanis – a boutique executive development firm that helps individuals and companies—from start-ups to the Fortune 100 companies—succeed by enhancing performance and improving effectiveness of their leaders and teams. www.arteshumanis.com

SOURCES

Liu KA, DiPietro Mager NA. Women’s involvement in clinical trials: historical perspective and future implications. Pharmacy Practice 2016 Jan-Mar;14(1):708. doi: 10.18549/PharmPract.2016.01.708 

https://www.statnews.com/2018/01/07/jpm-gender-diversity/

Men named Michael outnumber female CEOs presenting at #JPM18 By Rebecca Robbins @rebeccadrobbins and Meghana Keshavan @megkesh January 7, 2018

Route to the Top 2018

https://www.heidrick.com/Knowledge-Center/Publication/Route_to_the_Top_2018

"Filling the Pipeline: Advancing More Women Into The C-Suite And On Corporate Boards" provides a roadmap to guide companies' diversity and inclusion initiatives. https://www.ced.org/reports/filling-the-pipeline-advancing-more-women-into-the-c-suite-and-on-corporate

https://worldatwork.org/workspan/articles/final-stop-for-women-s-advancement-is-the-c-suite

https://fortune.com/2016/03/08/international-womens-day/