International Women’s Day 2025: Improving Innovation in Industry

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International Women’s Day is recognized annually on March 8, providing an opportunity for all to reflect on gender diversity and seek out ways to address disparity and inequalities. For the pharmaceutical industry, the gender gap has reduced over the years, with a healthier proportion of female representation in the workforce (1)—albeit in less senior positions than their male counterparts.

In fact, according to the Deloitte Global Boardroom Program’s Women in the Boardroom: A Global Perspective report, less than a quarter of board seats worldwide are held by women (2). Narrowing down to the pharma industry and the research has found that women hold approximately 29% of executive positions and are represented in approximately 28% of corporate boards, rising slowly and steadily over the past 10 years (3).

However, better diversity and gender equality in senior, leadership positions have been shown to improve profitability and return on equity for companies through greater innovation and more creative solutions being found for problems (4). To get some insights into the ways that women can help to improve innovation within the pharma industry, Pharmaceutical Technology® Group reached out to some of the women on our Editorial Advisory Boards.

Q. How can women help improve innovation within the pharma industry?

Evonne Brennan, Consultant at Evonne Brennan Consulting: Women continue to empower teams in driving innovation through their own belief and/or through the strength of support through their peers. Their combination of power in bringing teams together, logical reasoning, strong driving force, and recognition of diversity generates a solid advantage on the journey to success.

Emily Heffernan, US Director New Process Technology, Arcadis U.S., Inc.: Women are essential to innovation in the pharmaceutical industry, bringing unique and diverse perspectives that drive scientific breakthroughs. In recent years, female scientists have been recognized with Nobel Prizes for pioneering advancements, such as CRISPR [clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats] gene-editing and mRNA [messenger RNA] vaccine technology. Looking to the future, women in leadership roles can both mentor and inspire the next generation of women innovators and entrepreneurs, fostering a continuous cycle of progress and discovery.

Christa Myers, Senior Fellow–Aseptic & Sterile Products, CRB: The great innovators in the industry have been devoted to excellence above all. It takes effort and intention to dig past what the everyday offers.That is where innovation lies.Innovation happens when you push a solution to consider new methods, new ideas, or reuse old ideas in a new way.Women and men have to dedicate their thoughts to look for better instead of status quo in everything we do.In the pharmaceutical market—it is still true that there is a C in CGMP [current good manufacturing practice] that requires us to be ever improving, ever thoughtful, and ever reaching for higher quality, safety, and value for the patient. Innovation does not happen without intention. It takes study, curiosity, research to fuel that intention. Be ever vigilant in your daily planning to set aside time to look through different types of technology offered in ‘other’ parts of the industry to see what crossover technologies may be useful to the solution you are working on.Attend technical conferences and ask questions of component and equipment manufacturers about where they are seeing new uses for their technologies.Write down the technology and spend time later comparing the approach to different parts of the industry to tickle out where ‘else’ this technology might fit in.Stay engaged.Join membership groups and communities of practice and other thought leading groups to stay abreast of changes.Keep growing, keep chasing innovation, and keep jumping out of the status quo—it is easy to be innovative once—it is more difficult to continue to drive to innovate again and again.

Sue Schniepp, Distinguished Fellow, Regulatory Compliance Associates: Women have great compassion and insight which helps them relate to the patient experience. By staying in tune with their feelings, they can continue to make sure the industry continues to produce safe and effective medicines for patients.

References

1. Sterrett, L. Can Women Break Glass Ceilings in Healthcare/Life Sciences? Health Forward Blog. Deloitte, April 6, 2023.
2. Deloitte. Women in the Boardroom, Eight Edition. Deloitte Insights, March 6, 2024.
3. East Street Pharmacy. The Growing Role of Women in Pharmaceutical Leadership. EastStreetPharmacy.com (accessed March 6, 2025).
4. One Nucleus. Women in Pharma—Are We There Yet? OneNucleus.com (accessed March 6, 2025).