Academics Dr Elham Javaherizadeh and Dr Luisa Weinzierl at St Mary’s University, Twickenham (SMU) have been awarded funding from Research England to investigate the barriers to women advancing in healthcare leadership.
Their research will also evidence the enormous benefits derived from women senior leaders and demonstrate the importance of women achieving their leadership potential in UK healthcare. The project aims to analyse women’s experiences and how their gender can pre-determine their success in achieving and holding leadership positions.
As part of the project, there will be an in-depth examination of women’s exclusion in the sector, and consideration of the barriers and facilitators to women’s leadership at an individual and organisational level. The types of barriers could include organisational structure, gender bias, and lack of training. By doing this, the St Mary’s research team will be contributing to the advancement of gender equity in healthcare leadership.
Speaking on this project Business Management Lecturer Dr Luisa Weinzierl said, “Although women make up three-quarters of the NHS workforce, they still remain under-represented in senior leadership roles. For example, only 37% of foundation trust directors are women, and a minority of them are in chair or chief executive roles. In this project, we aim to understand more about women’s leadership styles and what issues that are preventing them from reaching their full potential.
“Recent studies have revealed that gender specific barriers, such as old boys’ networks, nepotism, and a pace-setting culture, are less of an hurdle than a decade ago. Nonetheless, women still remain absent from key leadership positions and so, why can we not have a woman lead the NHS? The project also looks into how to create the right conditions for more women to lead the NHS, alongside their male counterparts.”
St Mary's has a proud heritage in health sciences, and recently announced the launch of a new School of Medicine planning to welcome its first trainee doctors in September 2026.
Prof Sonia Kumar recently join the University as the founding Executive Dean of the School of Medicine, from University of Leeds. Prior to this, Prof Kumar had an award-winning tenure as the Director of Undergraduate Primary Care Education at Imperial College London, including the prestigious Presidents Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Teaching Excellence at Imperial and the CATE collaborative team award from AdvanceHE.