Women make up 70 percent of the health and social care workforce as nurses, midwives, and community health workers. Health care was one of the slowest sectors to integrate women into leadership, but it’s finally catching up to many other industries. However, hospitals and health systems are still struggling to promote women into leadership roles. There are several obstacles, including investment in leadership and placements for women which would scrutinize and we can be recognized as being a significant role in filling the gender gap role at the level of leadership.
Some barriers prevent women from entering the field of healthcare towards promotion, medical leadership, and related domains, which in turn leads to the under-representation of women as medical leaders. Women are still underrepresented in leadership positions in health professions and health care is not yet seen as a truly female-friendly career. There is a need to look into these statistics and make women understand that the medical profession is their first choice and for this, we have to remove some constrictions like biasness in mindsets of people and gender-biased rules. There is no doubt that the women over here are getting into every walk of life these days, but this trend has failed to trickle down in the medical arena where women still are to face all kinds of barriers from male-dominant societies and cultures.
There have been many cases of people dying or affected by this Ebola virus. Everyone in the world has been warned to be careful, but some people do not care at all. Especially in Africa, many women are fighting for their lives against the virus and they are showing a lot of courage, even if they get infected they continue to help injured ones till they die. Yet, women have been recognized locally and internationally as practitioners of traditional medicine who are known to utilize herbal plants for healing purposes. Traditional healers, and of course the women involved in such activities, have much to offer in combating the spread of diseases like Ebola and COVID-19.
Women should not have to fight for health share, they should be in proportion. This is an ongoing pandemic with continuous short and long-term damage. There may be a permanent loss of time where the damage is done cannot be recovered. Hesitating any further to act is irresponsible. Women are in distinct shortage at health leadership roles in health. The consequences are evident in many sectors of the world. The underrepresentation of women has actually led to the pandemic which we are currently going through with far-reaching consequences for global health systems.