Women in Healthcare: In the Pink of Health: Can strong participation open doors to wider leadership?

The sights and sounds of healthcare in India—from busy nursing stations to diagnostic labs humming with machines and outpatient queues threading through hospital corridors—leave little doubt about who keeps the system running. Women are present everywhere on the floor. They staff wards, run clinics, manage quality systems, and deliver care, driving daily operations across the health system even as their representation at the top continues to grow.

According to World Health Organization data published in 2024, women make up about 67% of the global healthcare workforce but hold around 25% senior leadership roles. In India, the pattern is similar. A 2023 study by Dasra, a Mumbai-based philanthropic organisation, found that women occupy roughly 18% of senior leadership positions in the health sector despite accounting for a large share of its operational and clinical workforce. A 2024 assessment published in PLOS Global Public Health found that 19.5% of India’s major medical associations are led by women. These figures underline the scale of women’s contribution and the growing opportunities for leadership as the sector evolves.

Where They Stand

The Udaiti Foundation’s Women’s Formal Employment Tracker 2024 reported that women’s representation is highest in hospitals and laboratories at 41%. The reasons women enter healthcare in such large numbers are practical as well as historical, say women leaders. Women were traditionally encouraged to take up nursing and caregiving roles. In the 20th century, medical and life-science education became more open to women.

“Healthcare has always been an environment where women can thrive because the sector is fundamentally built on trust, care and human connection,” says Ameera Shah, promoter and executive chairperson of Metropolis Healthcare. She says healthcare institutions have long been structured to support women, with systems, safety and workplace design creating an enabling environment.

Shobhana Kamineni, Promoter Director of Apollo Hospitals Enterprise Ltd and Executive Chairperson of Apollo Health Co Ltd, echoes this view. “Healthcare demands empathy, care and ability to take critical decisions,” she says, pointing to the traits that have historically drawn women into frontline clinical roles, public health services and nursing.

These structured and regulated environments, with defined shifts and predictable work rhythms, shape retention as much as entry. Dr Sadhna Joglekar, Senior Vice President and Head, Development India Hub, Novartis, believes the sector’s performance metrics and regulatory frameworks also create a transparent foundation for advancement. “Where women rise, it’s often because merit, performance and patient impact are visible, measurable and increasingly recognised,” she says.

Pathways To Top

As more women in healthcare build technical and operational expertise, how can they move into enterprise leadership roles? Senior leaders in pharma, diagnostic and hospital segments say women dominate clinical, nursing and functional roles, but have historically been less exposed to revenue-bearing P&L responsibilities, the traditional pathway to the top of large healthcare organisations.

“Women are more often placed in staff or enabling roles rather than in commercially accountable line roles at C-suite level,” says Rajwinder Mehdwan, MD and CEO of Roche Pharma India. She says this limits commercial experience and financial decision-making exposure that are critical for senior leadership.

The pattern is more visible in pharma and biotech where Dasra’s 2023 analysis shows women occupy only 7.5% of leadership positions. Lower presence in industrial manufacturing, historically male networks in pharma operations and expectations of global mobility for certain roles have narrowed the leadership pool.

Leadership style, however, has never been the barrier. Women leaders say qualities required to reach the top are not the monopoly of any gender. “At the highest levels of leadership, the traits of an effective leader are consistent, regardless of gender,” says Mehdwan. Dr Saloni Wagh, MD of Supriya Lifescience, shares her perspective from running a manufacturing operation. “The margin and scale outcomes depend not only on cost and volume but also on quality, regulatory approvals, global standards and people,” she says. In her experience, leaders who combine rigour with an ability to engage teams create more stable and future-ready organisations.

The value of inclusive decision-making comes up repeatedly in conversations with women leaders. “We wanted to make the right decisions for the business, but also create meaningful opportunities for our people to thrive,” says Mehdwan. Dr Joglekar recounts leading a multi-country transformation where a purely top-down approach seemed efficient on paper but would have undermined implementation. Choosing instead to co-create solutions helped reduce resistance and strengthened execution.

For many women aiming for senior roles, the skill sets they must consciously build follow three broad themes: financial fluency, strategic risk-taking and visible advocacy. “To reach the top, women in healthcare need to aggressively develop a strategic mindset, agility and broad experience,” says Mehdwan.

Shah points out the mindset change required. “Women need to give themselves permission to aspire and to articulate that ambition without hesitation.” Kamineni frames it even more candidly. “Three skills which they need are—think bigger, make bold decisions and become comfortable with taking big risks,” she says. She adds that pairing these attributes with care, patience, professional skills and technological fluency will become increasingly important as healthcare becomes more data driven.

Exposure to P&L, capital projects, export-market leadership and business development can be the turning point for many careers. “Women may excel in functional roles but may not be rotated into export-market leadership, large capex projects or global P&L ownership,” says Wagh of Supriya Lifescience. Such rotations, she believes, determine who enters the shortlist for top roles.

Timing also affects career trajectories. The highest attrition occurs between mid-management and senior roles, a period when women have a lot of caregiving responsbilities. “The pipeline often breaks for women around key life stages such as post-childbearing,” says Mehdwan.

What Next

Women leaders in the sector say progress is accelerating and the next decade will be defined by widening access, stronger institutional support and the leadership women are bringing to the field. India’s hospital and healthcare delivery market is pegged at $180 billion, the pharmaceutical industry at $63 billion, and diagnostics market at $11.38 billion. As they grow over the years, the opportunities for women to shape policy, clinical models, digital care and regulated manufacturing will grow correspondingly.

Women are already influencing patient-centred care models, digital platforms, compliance frameworks and workforce culture. Shah points to governance spaces and industry bodies where women are shaping national health priorities. Wagh highlights regulated-market strategies, therapeutic innovation and contract manufacturing as areas where women with strong cross-functional experience are assuming bigger roles. Kamineni believes the next leap will come from women entering data science, technology and digital care on a much larger scale.

But a significant intellectual gap remains in how female health needs are researched and funded. Jahnavi Phalkey, founder and Director of Science Gallery Bengaluru, argues that women should lead research on the female life course, from hormonal transitions to conditions such as endometriosis. “We need a better understanding of women’s health concerns,” she says.

Women leaders agree that strengthening the leadership pipeline now depends on widening pathways to commercial roles, ensuring early exposure to strategic decision-making and building organisational cultures that recognise life-course realities. As Mehdwan puts it, “Healthcare must consciously create conditions for their growth.” Women power India’s health system every day; the opportunity ahead is to match that presence with leadership. 

@neetu_csharma