Attitudes towards female managers in hospitals: Case study of Turkey

ABSTRACT

Health sector is the one of the main fields of work for females; yet they are underrepresented in senior management positions. This study was conducted to evaluate the attitudes of hospital staff towards female managers in a state hospital in Ankara and also to determine the variation in attitudes according to socio-demographic and occupational characteristics of the employees. Attitude towards Women Managers Scale, developed by Berkman (2005), was used. The sample consisted of a total of 348 subjects including managers, physicians, nurses, and other healthcare staff. The study found significant differences in the total scores of attitudes towards female managers between male and female subjects. The differences in attitude scores “work ethic” dimension regarding the total working time and working title were statistically found. Employees with 16 years and above at work also the technicians& administrative staff had a more unfavourable attitude towards female managers. Regarding the level of education, employees with a high school education had the most unfavourable attitude in the “professional behaviour” dimension. Results indicated that hospital management can develop institutional policies addressing social gender equality, implement training programmes and projects to promote positive attitudinal changes among employees especially towards female ones.

KEYWORDS:

• Diversity management
• hospital management
• social gender

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all staff of the Ankara Training and Research Hospital and Ankara University Research Fund Directorship in Turkey.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Authors’ contributions

Both authors contributed equally to the writing of this paper.

Ethical issues

Ethics committee of the University of Ankara.

Notes on contributor

Gamze Kutlu is research assistant in the Department of Healthcare Management at Ankara University. She completed M.Sc degree from the Department of Healthcare Management at Ankara University. She is pursuing her doctorate at the same department. Her primary areas of interest are health policy and healthcare management.

Yasemin Akbulut is working as an associate professor at Department of Healthcare Management, Ankara University. She has been working as a visiting professor at the Faculty of Health Management, Neu-Ulm University. Her main areas of interest are healthpolicy, management in health care, competency of hospital manager and women manager in hospitals.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Ankara Universitesi: [Grant Number 15L0241001].