• Healthcare leaders stress need for more women in leadership in ASX biotech sector
• ImpediMed’s female CEO and chair understand challenges for women in sector
• Dimerix CEO and MD Dr Nina Webster believes workplace flexibility helps women balance work and family

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day on March 8, leaders in the Australian healthcare sector believe while progress has been made, further work is needed to see more women in senior leadership roles.

The theme of IWD 2025 is ‘Accelerate Action’, with data from the World Economic Forum showing it will take until 2158, roughly five generations from now, to reach full gender parity.

ImpediMed (ASX:IPD) has strong female leadership with Dr Parmjot Bains as CEO and managing director and Christine Emmanuel-Donnelly non-executive chair.

Emmanuel-Donnelly is also non-executive director at PolyNovo (ASX:PNV) and Medical Developments International (ASX:MVP). She is also on the board of private label and licensing agency for visual artists Seminal, having also worked overseas at top Australian patent attorney firms and led the intellectual property function at CSIRO.

She acknowledges the challenges of balancing her 30+ year career with raising two children, now in their early 20s.

“The take from my journey is that if you seek out challenging roles and are ambitious it’s not always a linear path,” she told Stockhead.

She said decisions such as opting to further her career in an in-house role in an organisation like the CSIRO, rather than pursuing partnership in a patent attorney firm, happened because of the pressures of balancing family and work life.

“It was an extraordinarily difficult time trying to keep everything above water,” she said.

“Sometimes you have to step back to move forward.”

Bains’ career has also taken its twists and turns, and has involved juggling her family with work commitments.

The medical doctor and seasoned healthcare executive worked as the pharmaceutical giant Pfizer’s Gulf Cluster country manager before stepping into the interim CEO role at ImpediMed in January 2024 then taking up the position permanently in July.

“There were times when I held the fort at home to let my husband progress in his career and I’ve scaled back to prioritise the children and then gone back into my career,” she said.

“You’re always going to be making trade off decisions and there is no one linear path where you go up (and) up.

“Sometimes you have to go sideways or even a little bit down and then you can go back up.”

Workplace flexibility helps women balance family life

Dr Nina Webster, with a background in science, business and law, is CEO and managing director of Dimerix (ASX:DXB), non-executive chair of SYNthesis BioVentures and a non-executive director of Linear Clinical Research.

The mother of a girl and boy, both now in high school, said what had changed the most since she entered the industry was flexibility in the workplace.

“Early in my career the ability to work from home did not exist and I have worked for individuals at different levels who were rigid on hours in the office and not progressive,” she said.

Webster said for her it is about output and that does not necessarily mean sitting at a desk in the office every working day.

“Flexibility, whether it’s hours, working from home or hybrid between the two, is critical,” she said.

“A lot of our staff members have young families so the ability to be around even if they’re working has made that work-life balance more effective for all our staff and not just women.”

She said Dimerix operates across multiple time zones, requiring staff to work early mornings or late nights but offering greater flexibility for daytime breaks.

Webster said she worked part-time for 10 years when her children were young to juggle work and family.

“I went back full time when my youngest started school,” she said.

Support for gender quotas

While there are no official hard gender quotas for ASX-listed companies, the ASX Corporate Governance Principles and Recommendations recommends that companies in the S&P/ASX 300 have an objective of “not less than 30% of its directors of each gender”.

While listed companies are not required to follow the recommendations, there is some accountability.

Companies are required in their annual report to disclose the extent to which they have followed Corporate Governance principles and recommendations, identifying any that were not followed with a reason for not doing so.

When it comes to this year’s IWD theme of Accelerate Action Emmanuel-Donnelly is supportive of gender quotas.

Emmanuel-Donnelly does not support the argument that gender quotas undermine meritocracy.

She said quotas can level the playing field by ensuring talented women have equal opportunities to succeed.

“Meritocracy works if the playing field is level and when it is not then there is not true meritocracy,” she said.

Progress shaping future generations

Bains believes since the start of her career in medicine there has been enormous progress.

“When I went through med school there were hardly any women surgeons,” she said.

“Now we work with breast cancer surgeons in the United States and many of them are women and in Australia there’s a lot more women surgeons.

“I actually think women in STEM is going gangbusters and that is just fantastic.”

Bains believes the progress of women in (STEM) will flow through to leadership roles.

“We are not there yet but are more conscious about improving the number of female leaders,” she said.

Webster said for her daughter and her friends she had normalised working in a leadership position.

“For my daughter it is perfectly normal for a woman to be a CEO or on a board of directors because Mum does it,” she said.

“Whereas I can remember going through a period where I literally was the only female in the room of 100 men, so that has definitely changed for the better.

“I think the other part is the ability to speak up when something is not right, my generation was encouraged to keep quiet and just get on with it, but my daughter’s generation is encouraged to speak out if something is not inclusive or appropriate.”

Push for more women in boardrooms

Emmanuel-Donnelly said having more women on boards could in turn lead to more women as executive leaders of companies.

“One of the key roles of a board is to find a CEO and if you have females in leadership roles on a board, and that doesn’t have to be chair, you can be proactive when looking at candidates,” she said.

“It doesn’t mean you have to think I will only have a woman in that role, but it will certainly ensure you do not limit your search to only one gender, and I don’t think that would happen as readily if you didn’t have female leadership on a board.”

Emmanuel-Donnelly, Bains and Webster said that historically, boards were predominantly made up of men, who were key decision-makers for such positions. As a result, women well-suited for board and executive roles were often overlooked due to a lack of the same connections.

“When I was younger, I’d be told I need to go out and create connections and relationships with people in various companies, but I was just busy trying to get my job done with family,” Bains said.

Webster recognised networking was the only way to be seen and considered for potential advancement, while Bains said finding mentors was invaluable for female leaders seeking to move up in the business world.

At Stockhead, we tell it like it is. While Dimerix is a Stockhead advertiser, it did not sponsor this article.