Factors that influence the implementation of organisational interventions for advancing women in healthcare leadership: A meta-ethnographic study
Efforts to promote gender equity in healthcare leadership have primarily remained focused on identifying the problem and highlighting the lack of significant progress to date. Interventions often place the burden of change on the individual woman, requiring them to change, adapt, and compete in a system that has not been designed for them. Very little consideration has been given to the need to move beyond the individual-level, to address the systemic organisational factors that contribute to the under-representation of women in healthcare leadership.
A recent systematic literature review on what works at the organisational-level to advance women in leadership identified five key categories of effective organisational interventions. This study extends that work to investigate factors that influence the implementation of organisational-level interventions in the healthcare sector.
WHAT WE FOUND
Analysis revealed three themes that are central to implementing organisational interventions that advance women in healthcare leadership: (1) leadership commitment and accountability, influenced by internal and external organisational settings, salient for long term outcomes and for developing an inclusive leadership culture; (2) intervention fit and fidelity, with consideration given to the specific needs and requirements of women’s work conditions and preferences, as well as individual capabilities, capacity for leadership, and life circumstances. This should be balanced against maintaining interventional integrity and fidelity for implementation, and (3) cultural climate and organisational readiness for change, addressing and deconstructing traditional, conservative and constrictive perspectives on gender and leadership in health, and highlighting the facilitating role of male colleagues.
REFERENCE
Mousa M, Skouteris H, Boyle JA, Currie G, Riach K, Teede HJ. Factors that influence the implementation of organisational interventions for advancing women in healthcare leadership: A meta-ethnographic study. EClinicalMedicine. Sep 2022; 51:101514. doi:10.1016/j.eclinm.2022.101514
MEET THE RESEARCHER
Mariam Mousa is currently working towards a PhD investigating novel ways to advance women into healthcare leadership, by redefining career needs and trajectories and working with academics, clinicians and health providers to co-design and implement best practice organisational strategies.
PhD SUPERVISION TEAM
Professor Helena Teede, Monash University
Associate Professor Jacqueline Boyle, Monash University
