Gender bias in the workplace is real. It affects both women and men, and it extends to every industry and market sector. In healthcare, an industry largely dominated by women, there are currently very few seats occupied by female executives at the helm of large health systems, big pharmaceutical companies or other organizations.

Modern Healthcare reports “women dominate the healthcare workforce by a ratio of 3-to-1.” They also suggest women account for almost half of the law and medical school graduates in this country.

Ironically, in a subset of the industry dominated by women, male nurse salaries still average $6,000 more annually. It seems we have a gender bias. This article will help you understand this issue and how to avoid gender bias during your hiring process.

Fighting Gender Bias in Hiring Practices

Women have traditionally faced discrimination as they sought to become physicians, and men felt the sting when becoming nurses. But overall, it’s still women experiencing gender discrimination, with men holding up to 90 percent of leadership roles in the field.

Gender bias in healthcare hurts everyone. Hiring top talent of any gender, especially in a time of low unemployment and provider shortages, should remain a top priority.

How can organizations be sure they are avoiding gender bias in their healthcare hiring practices? Here are some suggestions to positively impact your organization.

• Consciously work to diversify your candidate pool.
• Re-evaluate your pre-employment screening and testing to ensure it is free of any gender biases.
• Develop a selection process that focuses on quantifiable qualifications tied to future job performance metrics.
• Consider blinding resumes by removing protected classes information that could identify the candidate’s gender or ethnicity.
• Hire by committee. Science for Work says “Team decisions can be more resistant to biases than individual decisions.”
• Develop a zero-tolerance policy for sexual harassment.
• Analyze and restructure pay policies to ensure fairness by ability, not gender.
• Create clear, measurable, and standardized criteria for evaluating all employees.
• Evaluate management decision-making for promotions and hiring.
• Work to provide mentoring to help bring new candidates into the field.
• Create diversity-in-hiring and non-discrimination policies and procedures.
• Create transparency in hiring and promotion. This will help eliminate any lingering “good old boy network” policies.
• Offer opportunities for additional training and advancement into leadership positions for women.
• Work to create more diversity in upper management.
• Educate employees about unconscious gender stereotyping. If we are unaware of our biases, we’ll be more likely to fall victim to them.
• Hold everyone – including leadership – accountable for hiring, promoting and firing decisions.

Changing the status quo in healthcare hiring is everyone’s responsibility. While any form of discrimination can land a company in legal trouble, the real crime happens every day in the undercurrent of gender bias in our field.

Hire Top Healthcare Talent Today

One way to ensure your organization works to eliminate gender bias during healthcare hiring is to use a professional staffing agency that recruits from a diverse hiring pool. National Recruiters casts a wide net to find our clients the most qualified talent in the healthcare field today. Get started with National Recruiters today!