Gender Diversity in the Management of Hospitals in CzechRepublic
Gender diversity has widely been discussed in some sectors of the CEE countries, while there is a lack of more in depth knowledge in some areas such as the present day healthcare sector. It is generally presumed that the number of women in top management roles in companies are on the increase in the Czech Republic; however, at a slower rate than in comparison with the other countries of Western Europe/EU. Moreover, the Czech Republic was one of eight countries who opposed a proposed EU regulation from the European Commission in 2012 that set a 40% quota on the mandatory representation of women in the management structures of selected companies. The gradual transformation of economic legal forms of ownership involved most of the 190 Czech hospitals. These changes gradually affected the transition to the new model in terms of efficiency, but also the supervisory authorities of hospitals in the newly created companies. Logically, such changes brought new demands for both qualifications and specific managerial skills. A whole range of evidence supports the claim that the source of these managerial skills is provided by women. The aim of this contribution is to map the representation of women in top management of health care facilities in the Czech Republic and verify whether there is a spontaneous growth in their representation. To serve this purpose, the gender composition of executive and supervisory bodies for 89 hospitals in 2006 and for 118 hospitals in 2012 was ascertained. A generalized linear model for repeated measurements was used for the analysis. However, despite the general trend of rising gender diversity, a statistically significant increase in the proportion of women has been demonstrated only in the case of executive directors.