DANIELA PEDRINI – PRESIDENT, ITALIAN SOCIETY OF ARCHITECTURE AND ENGINEERING FOR HEALTHCARE (SIAIS), ITALY WORKPLACE EQUALITY
Challengesforwomenin healthcare engineering
In the past 15 years, while much progress has been made for working women, men still hold a clear majority of the most important roles in healthcare. Here, Daniela Pedrini, president of the Italian Society of Architecture and Engineering for Healthcare (SIAIS), discusses how girls and women can be encouraged to enter and remain in the sector.
When it comes to equality in the workplace, women still have a long road ahead, facing considerable barriers and obstacles in their working lives. While the ground may be considerably
more even than it was a few decades ago, there is still a long way to go before we can say that there is true equality in the workplace (and beyond). Indeed, a lot of these issues are much more nuanced, and hence easier to dismiss by many who believe we have already achieved gender equality. Steps like government legislation,
corporate diversity policies, and individual action can go a long way. By raising awareness of these issues and educating people on them, we can continue to pave the way for future generations as well as create safe spaces for women to excel in.
How can we address these workplace issues? Men still hold most of the most important roles in healthcare. Currently, 69 per cent of global organisations are headed by men and 80 per cent of board presidents are men.
Whether it is underrepresentation of
women in executive roles, lack of childcare support, harassment, or biased and discriminatory behaviour, these issues are an ongoing occurrence for women across
Figure 1. The WHO Agenda 2030 includes gender equality.
all industries and organisations around the world. In order to climb the career ladder and
follow our professional ambitions, we must first break the glass ceiling. The WHO Agenda 2030 has placed gender equality among the seventeen goals for sustainable development: the enhancement of the role and talents of women and equal opportunities between women and men in economic development (see Fig 1). It is no coincidence that the
International Monetary Fund estimated Daniela Pedrini
Daniela Pedrini is president of the Italian Society for Healthcare Engineering and Architecture (SIAIS). She is a civil engineer, project manager certified PMP®
by PMI, and expert in total cost management
(AICE/ICEC – Certificate n. 60). She has enjoyed a long career in the health sector, with important roles in the management of the
technical aspects of hospitals. She is director of asset management of the University Hospital Sant’Orsola Polyclinic, one of the major hospitals in Italy, and Health Authority of Bologna. She is certified by CERTing as an expert building systems engineer, specialising in project management and hospital construction processes. She has
served as speaker in many conferences in Italy and abroad. She teaches in many healthcare engineering and university Master’s courses. Daniela has been honoured with a medal of the Italian Republic Order of Merit.
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that, in a hypothesis in which female employment was numerically equal to that of men, the growth of GDP (in Italy) would rise by 11 per cent. Furthermore, several studies carried out in recent years show that organisations that apply true gender equality internally are more innovative, productive, efficient, and better positioned on the market than their competitors. Yet women continue to be weak
players in the labour market. We need only look at Italy, where
female employment is about 18 per cent lower than that of men and women earn about 16 per cent less than men, despite being better educated. (2019, Italy Censis). The path to align these disparities will be neither easy nor short-term.
The challenges Some of the biggest challenges women face in today’s workplace, in a male dominated environment, include the following:
Pregnancy discrimination Many working women are faced with a major dilemma when it comes to starting a family. Pregnancy discrimination occurs when
IFHE DIGEST 2023
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