New Delhi, (10 Dec 2024): WomenLift Health convened a high-level roundtable of senior leaders from institutions across India’s public health ecosystem, underscoring their collective commitment to embed intentional investments in women’s leadership as a core component of institutional strategies. The dialogue, chaired by Dr Renu Swarup, Former Secretary to the Government of India, Department of Biotechnology, Ministry of Science & Technology and WomenLift Health India Leadership Journey mentor, marked a significant first step towards developing actionable insights and good practices for institutions to advance women’s leadership in public health in India.
The roundtable—featuring insights from diverse public and private health institutions identified for their commitment to and active steps taken towards advancing women’s leadership—served as a platform to understand existing challenges and opportunities for women’s leadership in health as well as contribute to jointly generating local evidence on how leadership can make institutions gender inclusive. The discussion also unpacked existing initiatives across institutions to foster women’s leadership, advance diversity and inclusion, and better support women and prevent dropouts from the workforce, especially at the mid-career stage. These included flexible work hours, childcare support, diversity, equity, and inclusion in recruitment processes, and investments in leadership development.
Dr Renu Swarup remarked that while increasing women’s representation in decision-making positions through structured leadership development programmes is a key step towards gender-inclusivity, institutions must focus on strategies that ensure long-term sustainability: “We need a pragmatic approach towards addressing challenges and focussing on finding mechanisms to overcome social, cultural, environmental, and workplace barriers facing women working in public health. We need to identify immediate steps to institutionalise these practices at all levels including at the ground-level.”
Through this convening, WomenLift Health aims to constitute an advisory group of public and private stakeholders across India’s health ecosystem – including government, research and development, and academic institutions as well as national and international non-governmental organisations, startups, and private health companies. The group will work towards publishing a white paper to address the barriers to women’s leadership in health in India as well as document concrete recommendations to foster sustained inclusivity at the institutional level.
“Institutional transformation happens at the intersection of people, policies, and processes,” remarked Ayesha Chaudhary, India Director, WomenLift Health. “Through this shared commitment towards greater gender inclusivity in health leadership, an advisory group such as this will contribute to both generating and disseminating much-needed evidence for the need for women’s leadership in health in India.”
The roundtable featured insights from representatives from diverse health institutions in India, including the Indian Council of Medical Research participants (ICMR), the Society for Applied Studies, Maharashtra University of Health Sciences (MUHS), PATH, the Public Health Foundation of India (PHFI), the Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative (DNDi), Global Health Strategies (GHS), International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), Social Alpha, Christian Medical College Vellore, and Haleon.
About WomenLift Health
Established in 2019, WomenLift Health’ s mission is to expand the power and influence of women leaders to transform health outcomes for women, girls, and vulnerable populations and be change agents for inclusive leadership. We work through regional hubs in East Africa, Southern Africa, North America, and India to deliver contextualized leadership development programmes to serve thousands of mid-to-senior women leaders around the world, equipping them with tools, networks and support systems to navigate their path to the highest decision-making levels in health. We support health institutions and their leaders to advance gender equality and generate evidence and support global and local convenings to contribute to societal change.
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For more information, please contact:
Sanaya Chandar, Senior Coordinator, Strategic Communications, India, WomenLift Health
[email protected]; +91 98236 50505
