Being a woman in health care comes with unique, inequitable challenges. Despite making up 77% of the industry’s workforce, women are often paid less than men and have fewer opportunities for career advancement. To show what companies are best for women in 2024, Forbes devised an extensive national ranking system, and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta is near the top of the list.
Ranked 24th, Children’s placed in the top 4% of businesses. It’s also not the only list Forbes has ranked the Georgia hospitalon. It came in as America’s 25th best large employer and 186th among best employers for diversity.
It was also not the only health care system to be acknowledged in the top spots. Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, ranked first, with women making up more than 80% of its 15,000-plus staff.
This is the seventh year Forbes has ranked U.S. businesses this way. The news outlet partnered with research firm Statista for a survey of more thab 150,000 working women to rank the 600 best companies based on participant recommendations. Those surveyed were asked to rate their employers based on work environment, pay equity, parental leave, and the company’s handling of incidents related to sexual misconduct and discrimination.
Statista then researched each company to determine its ratio of women to men in executive and board positions. The recommendations, ratings and research were then compiled into the final rankings.
The health care industry mostly consists of female workers, so it is naturally a battleground for gender equity. According to research published in Health Affairs Scholar, which analyzed survey data of 60,000 households from 2003 to 2021, female registered nurses were paid 82% of what their male counterparts were. Advanced practitioners made only 68% as much as men, with physicians making 70%.
“What accounts for the gender wage gap?” University of Minnesota associate professor Janette Dill and University of Washington professor Bianca K Frogner, both study authors, asked in their report. “Across occupations, occupational segregation — where men and women work in specific occupations — accounts for almost half the overall gender wage gap. Women-dominated occupations pay less, often much less, than male-dominated occupations, when controlling for education, skill level, work experience, and other factors.”
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