Women deliver eye health: Let’s reframe who leads it

This week at the 2023 Women Deliver Conference in Rwanda, The Fred Hollows Foundation launched its new report, “Women Deliver Eye Health: Let’s Reframe Who Leads It”.

It shows that the global health sector will continue to lose out on women’s talent and perspectives unless measures are taken to accelerate towards equal representation in senior leadership positions.

We are very proud to have supported The Foundation in this work. Firetail designed and conducted the research and analysis, and worked closely with the project team to develop the final recommendations.

Rachel McLachlan, Director of our Strategy Practice, led the project with Nicola Doyle, Consultant. The work included a high-level desk review of evidence relating to the impact of women in leadership positions, as well as interviews and case studies with leaders in governance, sport, education, and apparel to gather insights from other sectors.

You can find a link to the full report here.

‘Women Deliver Eye Health’ describes the current representation of women in global health as a “pyramid”: Women are 70 percent of health and care workers but hold 25 percent senior leadership positions in international health institutions and governing bodies.

Women face structural and intersecting hurdles on their path to becoming leaders and once they hold leadership positions. Among these are discrimination in the workplace, gender norms and stereotypes, less investment in mentoring and skills development for women, the ongoing gender pay gap and workplace harassment.

Excluding women from leadership positions creates negative consequences for the success of healthcare services, systems and delivery. The report finds that equal representation in leadership matters. It supports diverse voices making key decisions in resource spending and policy change, which promotes health systems that are more representative of the population they seek to serve.