“It takes a village to raise a leader”: Overcoming gender-specific barriers through individual, workplace, and organizational level facilitators

Women constitute most health workers, yet they hold proportionately fewer leadership positions. The literature is replete with normative advice to address gender specific barriers to women’s leadership; less attention is paid to the processes women undertake on their paths to leadership. We describe the leadership journeys of 23 women leaders in the health sector in Canada, guided by a multi-layered framework of barriers and enablers. A …