Gender representation and financial performance: an empirical analysis of public hospitals

Purpose – Recently, the relationship between gender representation and organizational performance has been the focus of various studies. However, some research gaps still exist. First, in the healthcare sector, this relationship has been poorly explored. Moreover, in public management studies, researchers focusing on performance tend to focus exclusively on gender differences at the top and/or middle management level. This research aims at exploring the relationship between women’s representation and performance in public hospitals at all organizational levels. Design/methodology/approach – To achieve the research objective, 63 healthcare organisations were analysed through ordinary least squares regressions on panel data from 2012 to 2018. Findings – Results show that, in the hospital setting, gender diversity and financial performance are related at every organizational level. Originality/value – To the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies focusing on the link between gender and performance at every level of professional and employment category; avoiding focusing exclusively on top management, which was the case in previous studies on the topic. Moreover, it contributes to a poorly explored literature which is gender studies in public healthcare management.