Wheeling ridiculously heavy suitcases filled with drug samples, impeccably dressed women move from one doctor’s office to another.
These pharmaceutical representatives are pictures of efficiency, but their climb to the top of the corporate ladder often is a difficult and lonely one.
A 1998 study conducted by Catalyst for the Healthcare Businesswomen’s Association found that while the number of women in the health-care industry was increasing, just 11.2 percent of its Fortune 500 officers were women. In the pharmaceutical industry, it was about 8 percent.
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More recently, Amherst, Mass.-based Innovara Inc., a health-care consulting and management firm, found that fewer than 9 percent of the top positions in U.S. pharmaceutical firms were held by women. In academic medicine and research, that number was less than 5 percent.
Barri Blauvelt, chief executive of Innovara, says she can count the number of women CEOs in her field “on less than one hand.”
Why do so few women move up? Often their companies require long-distance moves to get promoted–often difficult for women with families–or fail to provide mentors. That’s “de facto discrimination,” Blauvelt says.
In response, Blauvelt in 2000 founded Women In High Places, a group of health-care executives that meet to network and serve as resources for other women in the industry.
WIHP also offers corporate-sponsored internships for female college students, funding their research for a summer or a semester at select medical centers like The Cleveland Clinic or Johns Hopkins.
Blauvelt says the group’s hope is that a WIHP internship “is an accolade that will [automatically] make a woman stand out.”
And move up.
For more information, contact WIHP at www.innovara.com/wihp.shtml.