Pathways to leadership: what accounts for women's (in)equitable career paths in the health sectors in India and Kenya? A scoping review.

OBJECTIVES: We aimed to capture evidence on enablers and barriers to improving equal opportunity and effective organisational interventions that can advance women's leadership in India and Kenya's health sectors. METHODS: We systematically searched JSTOR, PubMed, SCOPUS and Web of Science databases, reference lists of selected articles and Google Scholar using string searches. We included studies that were published in English from 2000 to 2022 in peer-reviewed journals or grey literature, focused on paid, formal health professionals in India or Kenya, described factors relating to women's representation/leadership. RESULTS: We identified 26 studies, 15 from India and 11 from Kenya. From each country, seven studies focused on nursing. Participants included women and men health sector workers. Seven studies used mixed methods, 11 were qualitative, 5 were quantitative and 3 were commentaries. Factors influencing women's career progression at individual/interpersonal levels included family support, personal attributes (knowledge/skills) and material resources. Factors at the organisational level included capacity strengthening, networking, organisational policies, gender quotas, work culture and relationships, flexibility, and work burden. Nursing studies identified verbal/sexual harassment and professional hierarchies as barriers to career progression. Structural barriers included a lack of infrastructure (training institutes and acceptable working environments). Normative themes included occupational segregation by gender (particularly in nursing), unpaid care work burden for women and gender norms. Studies of interventions to improve women's career progression and sex-disaggregated workforce data in India or Kenya were limited, especially on leadership within career pathways. The evidence focuses on enablers and barriers at work, rather than on organisations/systems to support women's leadership or address gender norms. CONCLUSIONS: Women in India and Kenya's health sectors face multiple impediments in their careers, which impact their advancement to leadership. This calls for gender-transformative interventions to tackle discrimination/harassment, provide targeted training/mentorship, better parental leave/benefits, flexible/remote working, family/coworker support and equal-opportunity policies/legislation.

Legislation for advancing women's leadership in the health sector in India and Kenya: a 'law cube' approach to identify ways to strengthen legal environments for gender equality.

OBJECTIVES: This paper examines the availability of legal provisions, or the lack thereof, that support women to progress equitably into leadership positions within the health workforce in India and Kenya. METHODS: We adapted the World Bank's Women, Business and Law framework of legal domains relevant to gender equality in the workplace and applied a 'law cube' to analyse the comprehensiveness, accountability and equity and human rights considerations of 27 relevant statutes in India and 11 in Kenya that apply to people in formal employment within the health sector. We assessed those laws against 30 research-validated good practice measures across five legal domains: (1) pay; (2) workplace protections; (3) pensions; (4) care, family life and work-life balance; and (5) reproductive rights. In India, the pension domain and related measures were not assessed because the pension laws do not apply to the public and private sector equally. RESULTS: Several legal domains are addressed inadequately or not at all, including pay in India, reproductive rights in Kenya and the care, family life and the work-life balance domain in both countries. Additionally, we found that among the Kenyan laws reviewed, few specify accountability mechanisms, and equity and human rights measures are mainly absent from the laws assessed in both countries. Our findings highlight inadequacies in the legal environments in India and Kenya may contribute to women's under-representation in leadership in the health sector. The absence of specified accountability mechanisms may impact the effective implementation of legislation, undermining their potential to promote equal opportunities. CONCLUSIONS: Government action is needed in both countries to ensure that legislation addresses best practice provisions, equity and human rights considerations, and provides for independent review mechanisms to ensure accountability for implementation of existing and future laws. This would contribute to ensuring that legal environments uphold the equality of opportunity necessary for realising gender justice in the workplace for the health workforce. PRIMARY SOURCE OF FUNDING: Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (INV-031372).

Effect of high-risk versus low-risk pregnancy at the first antenatal care visit on the occurrence of complication during pregnancy and labour or delivery in Kenya: a double-robust estimation.

OBJECTIVES: We evaluated the causal effects of high-risk versus low-risk pregnancy at the first antenatal care (ANC) visit on the occurrence of complications during pregnancy and labour or delivery among women in Kenya. METHODS: We designed a quasi-experimental study using observational data from a large mobile health wallet programme, with the exposure as pregnancy risk at the first ANC visit, measured on a binary scale (low vs high). Complications during pregnancy and at labour or delivery were the study outcomes on a binary scale (yes vs no). Causal effects of the exposure were examined using a double-robust estimation, reported as an OR with a 95% CI. RESULTS: We studied 4419 women aged 10-49 years (mean, 25.6±6.27 years), with the majority aged 20-29 years (53.4%) and rural residents (87.4%). Of 3271 women with low-risk pregnancy at the first ANC visit, 833 (25.5%) had complications during pregnancy while 1074 (32.8%) had complications at labour/delivery. Conversely, of 1148 women with high-risk pregnancy at the first ANC visit, 343 (29.9%) had complication during pregnancy while 488 (42.5%) had complications at labour delivery. Multivariable adjusted analysis showed that women with high-risk pregnancy at the time of first ANC attendance had a higher occurrence of pregnancy during pregnancy (adjusted OR (aOR) 1.22, 95% CI 1.02 to 1.46) and labour or delivery (aOR 1.20, 95% CI 1.03 to 1.41). In the double-robust estimation, a high-risk pregnancy at first ANC visit increased the occurrence of complications during pregnancy (OR 1.23, 95% CI 1.04 to 1.46) and labour or delivery (OR 1.24, 95% CI 1.07 to 1.45). CONCLUSION: Women with a high-risk pregnancy at the first ANC visit have an increased occurrence of complications during pregnancy and labour or delivery. These women should be identified early for close and appropriate obstetric and intrapartum monitoring and care to ensure maternal and neonatal survival.