The growing number of women in leadership roles
Women are less likely to be in leadership positions at bigger medical device companies, but the disparity is slowly shrinking. That’s the takeaway from this year’s Women in Medtech issue.
Just 18% of executive roles at the top 100 publicly traded medical device are held by women, and only three companies have a female CEO, according to an analysis of Medical Design & Outsourcing’s annual Big 100. Of the 969 leadership positions at the world’s biggest medtech companies, only 172 are held by women. Nearly a quarter of the companies have no women in leadership roles and another 24 companies have a single female executive.
Medical device companies also doled out $2.7 million in research payments to 195 physicians in 2018. Only 16 of the recipients were women, who received a collective $322,000.
Diversity in medtech is trending toward parity, however. Medtech lobbying group AdvaMed said at its recent MedTech Conference that it would be focusing on diversity initiatives in the next fiscal year, including driving initiatives for more women in medtech. Many companies like Medtronic, Stryker and Johnson & Johnson have also outlined their own plans and initiatives online for diversity and inclusion in its workforce.
Stryker, McKesson, Cardinal Health, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Medtronic, Siemens, Baxter, Cook Medical, Danaher and Abbott were recently named some of the best companies for women to work for by Forbes, ranking out of 300. Women at those 11 companies hold 25% of C-suite roles, higher than the industry average.
Medtech diversity isn’t an outlier in corporate America. The gender leadership gap is apparent in most industries, with just 20% of high-tech executive, senior officers and management being female, according to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. The divide is even more stark if we break it down to race and ethnic diversity. The American Association of University Women reports that white men make up 63% of all leadership roles while white women hold 24%, Black women hold 2%, Hispanic women hold 1%, Asian American women hold 1% and other racial and ethnic groups hold less than 1% of executive roles.
Though women in leadership roles is still not what it could be, the number of women in executive ranks is on the rise. The Center for American Progress reports that women held no executive ranks in the Fortune 100 companies in 1980. By 2001, 11% of executives were female, and in 2017, 6% of Fortune 500 CEOs were women.
Danielle Kirsh
Senior Editor
Medical Design & Outsourcing
dkirsh@wtwhmedia.com