Women are on the front lines of the coronavirus crisis, but too few are in leadership positions

In the current pandemic too few women are visible as leaders despite the huge roles they play on the front lines of this extraordinary crisis.

Consider health care. Nationwide, women still make up the vast majority of the nursing workforce. Nurses play a vital role in the management of this outbreak, not only making critical real-time decisions in chaotic and uncertain circumstances, but filling a key health communication and education role for patients and the public. They also take on personal health risks for the sake of providing lifesaving care and protecting public health.

Even outside the front lines of ERs and ICUs, professions staffed primarily by women bear the brunt of adapting to the challenges associated with this disease — and are reacting remarkably quickly to come up with new modes of work and community-building. Teachers are working fast to provide resources for their students through online tools. Senior care workers are developing extra precautions to protect the vulnerable population they serve. And let’s not forget the moms working hard to make sure their children are healthy, educated and occupied, often while also working their own jobs.

I don’t see women in these roles in the public dialogue about COVID-19 represented enough.

Why does it matter that women take on leadership roles? To answer, let me tell you a story about Texas Woman’s University, where I serve as chancellor. A little over a year ago, a team of five students entered for the first time ever the Texas Space Consortium’s Design Challenge, organized by NASA. Our diverse team of women and men working together won in three of the four categories, including the top prize. But how did a university that has no engineering program take home the top prize in a competition built on NASA research objectives?

The answer: Our students had a different way of thinking about the NASA design challenge. Space exploration is not only the vehicles and chemical reactions that propel humans into space, it’s also about sustaining human lives. Our students used their expertise in kinesiology and in textiles and their collaborative skills built across disciplines to solve a hard problem that no one else chose to tackle. They created a product that addresses the physiological stresses experienced by astronauts.

Women are skilled at this kind of creative, cross-disciplinary thinking, and their experiences often build perspectives that can make them uniquely valuable in addressing complex challenges. During the most pressing health crisis in a century, it’s time for women to roll up their sleeves and claim a place at the table. Let’s hear from the women who are serving as health care, education and community leaders and learn from wisdom built on the front lines.

Long term, we must ensure that we train women to be leaders, to step forward and claim space in critical dialogues like the current response to COVID-19.

As a university that trains a significant number of our students for futures in health care, we have asked ourselves how we are best able to make a contribution to the challenges we face. In response to this crisis, we are committed to a new focus on women’s leadership in health care, ensuring that we inculcate in the next generation of health care leaders in nursing and allied health fields the skills to