Globally, women hold around 70% of health worker jobs, over 80% of nursing and over 90% of midwifery roles and deliver the majority of unpaid care and domestic work in families and communities. If leadership roles in health were allocated proportionally (assuming that women and men have equal merit) then 70% of health sector leaders would be women. Yet at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 women held only 25% of leadership roles in global health.
This global situation is experienced as a day-to-day reality for women health workers around the world, from the USA to Europe, and in our own countries of India, Kenya and Nigeria. As part of the Women in Global Health (WGH) movement, in 2022, we worked collaboratively on research to explore the state of women’s leadership in health; using women’s testimony as data we sought to capture the experiences of and recommendations from women working in our health sectors.