International Women’s Day is an occasion to celebrate the women who have fought against all forms of discrimination, exclusion, marginalization, violence, and unequal opportunity faced by women around the world. The day also is a chance to remember that, in most countries, these challenges persist and require continued activism. Action to advance women’s leadership in global health is receiving attention in the wake of ‘glass-ceiling’ debates sparked by images of the Fearless Girl statue facing down Wall Street’s charging bull. Our Open Access article, entitled GROW: A Mentorship Model to Advance Women’s Leadership in Global Health, describes widespread inequities in women’s global health leadership. It also provides ethical and practical rationales for sustainable change. Finally, it offers a South-to-North mentorship model that we invite academic departments of global health to consider.

As we point out, women are the majority of health workers globally, but are over-represented in lower-rung jobs and under-represented in global health leadership. This disparity cuts across academic, medical, public-health, and multilateral agencies, as well as major funding agencies in the arena of global health. In UN and other agencies charged with improving women’s health, a majority of senior leaders are men. Many academic departments of global health, including ours, fit this pattern. We support collective accountability, as well as the mandate for local and global change.

These disparities undermine ideals of gender justice. They also undercut the representation of women’s diverse interests in spheres of power that directly affect women. Finally, these disparities weaken what we seek—a culture of inclusion, in which all genders share insights to advance the science and practice of global health. In our article, we discuss a South-to-North model for mentorship based on a theory of women’s empowerment that feminist economist, Naila Kabeer, proposed. In her model, women’s empowerment involves claims on new resources to enhance agency for the achievement of well-being under historical oppressions. Agency involves a critical awareness of one’s capabilities and rights, personal action to achieve self-defined goals, and collective action to achieve shared goals. We have embedded these concepts and principles into GROW, a model of mentorship to build leadership in global health. Our model is tailored to serve diverse women and men. Testimonials from pilot work since 2015 suggest that GROW has been effective to advance personal and collective capabilities. We welcome opportunities to adapt GROW to other contexts and to continue a process of mutual learning.

Please sign our Call for Commitment to Gender Inclusion in Global Health Leadership.

Acknowledgements: Thanks to Dr. Carlos del Rio for sharing the article by Oni et al. and documentation on SheLeads (SheLeadsHealthcare.com and WomensLeadership.HMSCME.com.)

References

1. Schwalbe N. Global health: generation men. The Lancet 2017;390(10096):733.
2. Yount K, Miedema S, Krause K, et al. GROW: a model for mentorship to advance women’s leadership in global health. Global health, epidemiology and genomics 2018;3
3. Khan MS, Lakha F, Tan MMJ, et al. More talk than action: gender and ethnic diversity in leading public health universities. The Lancet 2019;393(10171):594-600.
4. Silver JK. #BeEthical. A Call to Healthcare Leaders: Ending Gender Workforce Disparities is an Ethical Imperative 2018 [Available from: http://sheleadshealthcare.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/ Be-Ethical-Campaign.pdf.
5. Kabeer N. Resources, agency, achievements: Reflections on the measurement of women’s empowerment. Dev Change 1999;30(3):435-64.
6. Oni T, Yudkin JS, Fonn S, et al. Global public health starts at home: upstream approaches to global health training. The Lancet Global Health 2019;7(3):e301-e02. doi: 10.1016/S2214-109X(18)30558-8