Gender Equality in Healthcare Leadership: A Narrative Review of the Literature

The “great man” theory excludes women by definition. Recently, in healthcare, there has been an increasing number of women in leadership positions; however, the number of women leaders is lower than that of men leaders, even though the number of female health workers is far greater than that of men. This article aims to investigate whether there is a difference between male and female leadership, the winning characteristics of the latter and whether (and possibly what) barriers and ob-stacles there are to female leadership. Method: a review of reviews available on Pub-med was conducted using a specific search query. The authors analyzed the articles according to specific inclusion and exclusion criteria, using the PICO methodology. Results: of 967 articles, 18 met the inclusion criteria. Among the typical characteristics of female leadership, the most common are: democratic and non-individualistic style, communication skills and empathy. Among the most common obstacles to the affir-mation of female leadership are lower compensation, the presence of prejudices due to stereotypes and the lack of support from institutions in solving the gender gap. Con-clusions. Academic studies confirm that women tend to apply a transformational leadership in contrast to the autocratic and assertive male leadership. Continued re-search into female leadership is essential for monitoring progress and fostering actions that allow women to prosper in top leadership positions.