The Gender Gap Tool Box Developed By Monash University

Decades of research on advancing women in leadership shows that effective strategies can drive change Monash University research has identified a ‘toolbox’ of effective interventions that can be implemented to advance women in leadership, with specific lessons for healthcare.

The research has shown that to close the gender gap and enable women to achieve their career goals, organisations need to adopt dedicated leadership and commit to ground up co-development with women and the broader workforce to meet their needs in implementing the interventions in the long-term.

Integrating 20 years of research, findings highlight the need for effective interventions that sit across five categories: organisational processes; awareness and engagement; mentoring and networking; leadership development; and support tools.

These tools are being integrated into a concise codesigned and evidence-based framework for healthcare organisations to adapt, implement, monitor and refine.

Incorporating lessons from the Business, Academic, Health, Sports and Finance sectors, the research suggests a move beyond the focus on problems and barriers to gender equity and advancing women in leadership, to a focus on effective strategies to enable women to attain their career goals. These include the need for genuine leadership commitment and accountability in sanctioning and delivering multi level organisational interventions that support the workforce.

The findings are published today in The Lancet’s EClinicalMedicine

Research shows that globally, no woman alive today, or her children, will see the world achieve gender parity as on current trends we will not close the gender gap for an extraordinary 125 years. The Global Gender Gap Report from the World Economic Forum revealed that Australia was ranked 50th in the Global Gender Gap Index 2021 rankings (Dropping 11 places from 2019). Despite progress in increasing awareness and policy intent, women still do not have the same opportunities as men, and this is starkly reflected in the healthcare sector that remains “delivered by women and led by men”.

Frustrated by a sector whose solutions to this inequity have been adhoc and focused on strategies to target individual women, and have not relied on evidence-based and system level change, Professor Helena Teede, Professor Of Women’s Health and Director of Monash Centre for Health Research Implementation, recognised the vital need to identify, adapt, implement and scale evidence-based solutions for healthcare.