Advancing Gender Equity in Indian Healthcare Leadership
Summary
In 2023, Dasra committed to advance gender equity in Indian healthcare leadership. In partnership with Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Women in Leadership (WIL) initiative, Dasra will leverage $1,450,000 of investment over the next two years to promote gender equity in India, accelerating progress towards Sustainable Development Goal 5. Designed to achieve women’s equal access to leadership positions in the healthcare sector, Dasra through this initiative, will identify, engage, and expand the local ecosystem organizations and stakeholders working within the gender, health sector, organizational change, and advocacy spaces to advance gender equality efforts. Dasra will transform rhetoric to action and create a repeatable, scalable model that will be applied across fields starting with healthcare and eventually extended and customized to additional fields such as law, economics, and STEM industries.
Approach
Dasra has a strong ethos to include gender intentionality across all aspects of work and partners. It recognizes that advancing gender equity is a pressing issue in India and requires changes in knowledge, attitudes, and practices. As a partner of the Women in Leadership (WIL) initiative, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, (BMGF) Dasra commits to accelerate progress toward Sustainable Development Goal 5 by moving women into leadership roles in the healthcare sector in India by anchoring a consortium of four partners working across organizational change, advocacy and policy. This effort is part of a global move towards increasing the participation of WIL that BMGF is leading. For the WIL project, Dasra is the consortium lead for India, managing a portfolio of work that focuses on mid-career women working in the public and private health sectors in India.
Through this consortium, Dasra will drive all activities to achieve the following 3 core objectives:
1. Developing 1-2 replicable solutions for promoting organizational change that supports advancement of women in leadership positions in healthcare, that can be applied across fields such as STEM etc.
2. Creating and disseminating evidence of the issue and findings from the pilot
3. Scaling impact by building sector champions through advocacy
Across the 2-year timeline, Dasra aims to build a landscape analysis and subsequent pilot solutions, parallelly disseminate learnings and promote national-level advocacy on the issue.
Dasra brings 20+ years of experience in designing multi pathway strategies for impact at scale, capacity building, convening and donor education. Dasra’s networks include representatives of the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, experts across the private sector, technical advisors such as UN Women, and international think tanks. Dasra has connected with major hospital conglomerates (Apollo, Fortis) and federations (Association of Healthcare Providers India) as part of the project. Finally, Dasra will remain committed to staying connected with on-ground healthcare leaders, many of whom are mainstream healthcare practitioners running leading non-profit organizations.
Action Plan
Overall, 480 women will be directly affected, split across the 2 pilots. Given that we will be partnering with a minimum of 2 organizations of roughly 800-1000 employees each.
The project aims to achieve three primary objectives over the course of its timeline from April 2023-June 2025. Below is a breakdown of the implementation steps & deliverables that include quarterly timelines.
Objective 1 focuses on developing 1-2 replicable solutions to create an environment where all women can rise to leadership and exercise decision-making. To successfully achieve this objective, we will
Identify the key barriers at structural, institutional, and cultural levels that hinder mid-career women’s leadership in the Indian health sector. (Apr23-Jun23) Outline potential impact and feasibility of organization change strategies by establishing the baseline of organizations, conduct diagnostics of barriers and enablers, and develop a measurement framework. (July23-Dec23) Pilot 2-3 advocacy strategies, document learnings, and share them within network organizations (Oct23-Jun25) Objective 2 focuses on disseminating evidence through thought leadership and advocacy. To successfully achieve this objective, we will
Conduct a landscape analysis of the policy and advocacy ecosystem related to gender and health, map stakeholders involved in policy, advocacy, and movement building to engage them in the implementation design. (Jul23-Sep23) Identify ongoing research and advocacy efforts that can be leveraged to promote a gender equitable approach and develop strategies for advocacy in the health sector. (Oct23-Dec23) Conduct bi-annual documentation and sharing of insights and learnings with the network organizations (Oct23-Jun25) Objective 3 involves building championship for solutions and building a scalable, repeatable model for least 2 more adjacent sectors. To successfully achieve this objective, we will
Conduct secondary research and interviews with industry experts and global consortium leaders to determine optimal ways to create scalability (Jan24-Mar23) Consultations with experts to encourage sharing of learnings and build championship for the solutions developed. (Jan24-Jun25)
Background
As one of the industries with highest representation of women, the healthcare sector has the opportunity to set a precedent for women in leadership. And yet, while women comprise 70% of the globe’s healthcare workforce, they make up only 25% of senior leadership. Among healthcare CEOs it took women an average of three to five years longer to be tapped for the top role, according to a recent report by Oliver Wyman. The same study found that women make up only around 30% of C-suite executives and 13% of CEOs across the sector.
Currently, India, along with other low and middle-income countries, is seeing a feminization of the healthcare workforce, and yet women in healthcare are concentrated on the frontline, with low-paying jobs. Overall, women in India make up almost 50% of the workforce in the healthcare sector yet continue to earn 34% lesser than their male. Many of the barriers holding women back from leadership positions in the healthcare sector are like those seen across the Indian workforce. These include the disproportionate double burden of unpaid care and domestic work, deep rooted gender discrimination among existing senior leadership in the sector, rampant sexual harassment that is only rarely addressed, and a dearth of networks to mentor and support women to grow within professional spaces.
However, when compared with fields across different educational disciplines such as arts, law, and mathematics – the labor force participation rate for women graduates with a degree in medical sciences was observed the highest, at 59.9%. This implies that skilled women participate more effectively in the healthcare sector.
The Indian healthcare sector has tremendous potential to advance gender equity, by disrupting the trends in female labor force participation. Moreover, the relatively high existing representation of women in the sector provides greater opportunities to advance them and set a precedent for women in leadership in other fields as well.
Progress Update
Landscape & Evidence Creation Dasra with partners conducted a landscape to define key organizational change levers for women’s advancement in the Indian healthcare sector. Sources for the research included 50 expert interviews, 25+ research reports and third-party data sources, 250+ company annual reports, and 900 leaders’ career profiles. The study benchmarked the starting representation of women today, and an aspirational but feasible goal. It determined sector-shaping sub-sectors and identified lighthouse organizations within those with outsized influence. These learnings are informing the pilot design.
Building champions Dasra is engaging a community to serve as a platform for learning, sharing, and collaborative action towards gender equity.
The ‘WomenLead India Alliance’ was announced as a pioneering cross-sector, multi-stakeholder alliance to impact lives of 10 MN girls & women across India. So far, 21 partners are dedicated to understanding existing structures and best practices in alliance building, and mobilizing support for a compelling, India-first narrative on women and girls’ leadership. Dasra has commissioned to supporting efforts of 100 women NGO leaders to build resilience and cede power to community-led organizations. It is also curating spaces for subject specific ‘Community of Practices’ such as for healthcare to guide on the programming.
Evidence dissemination & research The extensive landscape study conducted was released in a series that included a final report , ‘An Unbalanced Scale’ and a ‘menu’ of organizational practices to advance women’s leadership in healthcare.
Roundtables with sector leaders made glaring the gaps in the quality and quantum of resourcing for gender equity and how civil society raises capital for gender work. To raise inquiry for women and girls’ leadership and to inform investment, they are advancing research on philanthropy and civil society in India. This will seek to influence social norms and cultivate a larger public narrative.
Partnership Opportunities
To ensure the commitment of achieving gender equitable advancement processes across sectors, Dasra will seek the following support-
Access to Global Experts: Connecting with technical and on-field experts working on gender equity, in both private and public sectors from across the globe for strategic input and expertise will help validate efforts, scale our solutions and explore cross-learning synergies
Data Exchange: With a world equipped to tackle any remote challenge through the power of data, we are keen to also learn from research, exchange and analysis of data internationally.
Dissemination platforms: Dasra hopes to access a platform to share and amplify their learnings, work, and seek solutions, recommendations from global field experts across., Dasra has an India-focused, locally rooted, outcomes-based, long-term approach towards all its efforts.
Pilot solutions to create more gender equitable advancement practices in healthcare organizations: Dasra is devising industry vetted best in class replicable organization change strategies that will be documented and made open source for other health care companies and other industries to use.
Dasra’s network and partnerships: Dasra is creating a platform and association for health organizations interested in peer learning, collaboration and collective advocacy to collectivize, and regularly share learnings, challenges and solutions together.
Thought Leadership & cross learning: Dasra is offering additive, India focused literature and knowledge on women’s leadership in health- an area that is heavily under resourced and with a dearth of available information. This knowledge will offer opportunities for participation to other organizations, investors, funders as well as governments working in the sector.
Through this grant, Dasra aims to build on its existing expertise with additional capabilities in private sector focused advocacy to help build and sustain championship towards the aim of increasing women in leadership positions.