Target of women holding half of top jobs missed

The NHS Confederation has stressed that NHS leadership that more fairly represents women in senior roles is ‘essential, overdue and needed now’.

A new report, Action for Equality: The Time is Now, has found that while progress has been made to increase the proportion of women in leadership roles across the health service, there is much more to do to meet the NHS’s target for 50:50 representation this year, as set by the NHS regulator in 2016.

The research, undertaken by the NHS Confederation’s Health and Care Women Leaders Network, found that fewer than half (44.7 per cent) of executive and non-executive roles across NHS trusts are held by women. Whilst this is an improvement from 39 per cent in 2017, it still falls short of the equality target set by the NHS, and is made up of ranging representation across the country - from as low as 15.4 per cent all the way up to 77.8 per cent.

The report also found variation in how women are represented in specific roles. For example, only one in four chief financial officers and nearly one in three of medical directors across the NHS are women. The greatest progress with female representation was found in non-executive roles, where more than two fifths are now women.

NHS Confederation says that women would need to be in an additional 150 executive and non-executive directorships, including 40 medical director and 50 chief finance officer roles across NHS trusts and arm’s-length bodies, to achieve the European Commission’s definition of gender balance of 40 to 60 per cent.

The Health and Care Women Leaders Network has made a number of recommendations in its report, including the need for chairs of NHS organisations to have explicit objectives to support diversity across their boards, and for clear succession plans to be set up to improve female representation, particularly in medical director and chief finance officer roles, with emerging leaders at mid and senior levels given the opportunity to experience board-level working.

Sam Allen, chair of the NHS Confederation’s Health and Care Women Leaders Network and chief executive of Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust said: “It is well-established that boards that properly reflect the communities and staff they serve lead to stronger decision-making and better outcomes for patients.
 
“The NHS has made progress, but there remains much more for leaders to do in order to achieve consistent and meaningful gender balance. We must move away from the concept that gender balance is tokenistic or a ‘nice to have’, to something that is essential, overdue and needed now. This requires an inclusive and compassionate approach to leadership, with everyone in these vital positions held to account for their contributions.”