Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day

FPM is today celebrating Ada Lovelace Day, an international event marking the achievements of women in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM).

To mark this special day FPM is delighted to announce an upcoming new project called Women in Pharmaceutical Medicine, which will endeavour to understand the barriers that hinder the career progression of women in the pharmaceutical industry.

Recent research in the USA has shown that there is a paucity of women in senior roles in the pharmaceutical industry and that the average female doctor earns $105,000 less than her male colleague, a gap that has been widening over time in both the USA and UK.

Recent events in the media have also exposed the entrenched inequalities that exist for black people, and the experiences of black women in particular have remained mostly hidden. In July 2020 Ken Frazier, the only African American CEO of a large pharmaceutical company, called on businesses to tackle the opportunity gap that is still prevalent for African Americans.  Lean In’s research on Women in the Workplace highlighted that black women experience disproportionate discrimination compared to women of other races and ethnicities as well as being paid less than men and most other groups of women

As a result, FPM’s Women in Pharmaceutical Medicine project will also investigate the specific experiences of black women working in pharmaceutical medicine to identify the unique barriers that they face in their careers.

Outputs from the project, which is being supported by the Royal Society of Chemistry, will be used to address the intersection between race and gender, and drive impactful change to help organisations proactively operationalise diversity of both gender and race, thus leading to a real equality of access to opportunities for everyone, regardless of their background.

Keep checking our website over the next few months for further updates on this project.