Healthcare Is Experiencing A Boom In Female Entrepreneurs And Leaders

In October, the Nobel Prize for chemistry was awarded to two women, Emmanuelle Charpentier and Jennifer A. Doudna for the development of a method for genome editing called CRISPR. This is the first time two women have won this prestigious prize and is a timely signal of the growing role women play in health-related fields.

While specific data is hard to find, anecdotal evidence seems to show more women are founding or leading efforts in the healthcare and life sciences industries. And even though women still lag men in the percentage of healthcare leadership roles, with only 13% serving as CEOs and 30% being part of C-suite teams, they tend to be better represented at the top versus in other sectors like financial services or technology.

Lygeia Ricciardi, Chief Transformation Officer of Carium attributes some of this larger role to simple volume. Given that women make 80% of the healthcare buying decisions in the United States and make up 65% of the healthcare workforce, she says it’s “only natural that we have strong opinions and insights into how to make it better.” And she sees lots of room for improvement, pointing to the opportunity to help people – especially women – use digital tools to better manage and improve their health.

Astarte Medical cofounder and CFO Tammi Jantzen echoes this point. “Women are the Chief Medical Officers of the home. It only makes sense that more women are leading companies in healthcare – they know their customer because they are their customer.” Jantzen also believes that as discussions about women’s issues like sexual and reproductive health become less taboo, more female entrepreneurs are seeking solutions.

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