Dismantling the structures of inequality: why we need feminist leadership in the health sector

Since the term was first coined in the 1970s, much has been written about the “glass ceiling” effect—the phenomenon whereby women and others who are subject to structural exclusion and marginalisation are present at all levels of the workforce except the top.1 The experience is so widespread that in the early 1990s the US government established a Glass Ceiling Commission, which ran for five years and sought to examine questions “relating to the advancement of women and minorities to management and decision-making positions.”2 The commission identified three types of barriers that were hindering equality at the highest levels of corporate America—societal barriers (eg, education levels, bias, and stereotyping), government barriers (lack of accountability systems), and organisational barriers (how businesses recruit, appoint, retain, and promote staff). More recently, the metaphor of the “glass cliff” has been used to describe the phenomenon in which women are disproportionately appointed to leadership positions that…
Read Original Article: Dismantling the structures of inequality: why we need feminist leadership in the health sector »