Insights
Heidrick & Struggles: Biopharma Focus: Gender Diversity
The benefits of having a diverse workforce, including at the top, are well known. Biopharmaceutical companies are making strides in gender diversity, but both securing these executives and retaining them are proving difficult for many.
Indeed, just 6% of CEOs at these companies are women; this figure, while low, is roughly on par with the 7% of women CEOs in the Fortune 500.2 At the executive level more generally, one study shows that, among nearly 200 biopharmaceutical companies around the globe, some 16% of C-suite executives are women.
To get a better sense of how women executives in biopharma are progressing and moving around both within the industry and beyond it, Heidrick & Struggles reviewed the leadership profiles of 893 women on leadership teams in the top 50 global pharmaceutical companies.