P&G Health India hosts the first “Women in Healthcare” Summit to encourage more women to join the Healthcare and Pharma Sectors
Mumbai : Aligned to its commitment to Equality & Inclusion, Procter & Gamble Health Limited announced its first “Women in Healthcare” Summit, bringing together nearly 1000 students from across 14 pharmacy colleges to learn from a discussion on opportunities and careers in healthcare with eminent women leaders and the P&G Health Leadership Team.
Mr. Milind Thatte, Managing Director, P&G Health India said, “Statistics show that the average representation of women in sales is relatively low, in the healthcare industry. At P&G Health, we are committed to foster a culture of equality and inclusion in the company which also extends to our work in the industry. It is our constant endeavor to ensure we provide equal opportunities at the workplace. The ‘Women in Healthcare’ Summit is an effort towards this initiative. Through the newly instituted ‘P&G Scholarship Program’, we will also be providing an opportunity to deserving girl students, thereby facilitating their choice of careers in the sector.”
Eminent women healthcare leaders from the industry covered a wide range of topics ranging from Breaking the Bias to sharing their experiences at the workplace under the section, My Story.
The engagement with the participating pharmacy colleges began with a competition inviting participants to share innovative and implementable solutions for some real-world challenges that either prevent women from joining the workforce or limit their career growth in the Healthcare and Pharma sectors such as access to health and hygiene resources on the go, physical safety, psychological safety etc. The below participants won awards for their novel ideas:
In addition to facilitating discussions and perspective sharing on careers in healthcare at the summit, P&G Health also announced a scholarship program for deserving women pursuing pharmaceutical courses in partnership with the Centre for Civil Society. Apart from providing financial support to deserving students from participating colleges, this scholarship will also provide for mentoring opportunities to high-potential students to help them build rewarding careers in the sector.
Speaking on P&G Health’s E&I vision Bhargavi Kakunuri, Director – Human Resources, P&G Health India stated, “At P&G Health, we have a proactive action plan called i-RISE which focuses on Recruiting more women in partnership with colleges, Institutionalising growth by identifying and training women talent to take up leadership positions, Stepping up to inclusion by creating an environment of security for women in sales, and Enabling accountability within the workplace, thereby continuously employing interventions to encourage more women across roles and hierarchies. We are also currently working with start-ups to explore safety and sanitation measures to help women in sales. Further, through P&G Health’s GABLE program we also seek to attract, retain and enable better productivity amongst LGBTQ+ employees through a culture of inclusion and on-ground support and networks.”