Dr Sara Khan talks to HSJ about Facebook chief operating officer Sheryl Sandberg’s theory of “leaning in” and explains the leadership styles emerging from a new generation of women doctors

In the UK, 66 per cent of public sector employees are female, yet only 35 per cent hold leadership positions. Women are in just 5 per cent of top corporate jobs. This has remained the same for the last 10 years.

Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, in her book Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead, called for women to stop holding themselves back and to “lean in” to their careers while “leaning out” of their personal lives.

“We lower our own expectations of what we can achieve,” says Sandberg. In what she describes as the leadership ambition gap, she examines why women’s progress in achieving leadership roles has stalled.

“We continue to do the majority of the housework and childcare. We compromise our career goals for partners and children who may not even exist yet. Compared to our male colleagues, fewer of us aspire to senior positions,” she writes.

New generations of young, ambitious female leaders aim to change this. Dr Sara Khan, editor of the Medical Women’s Federation magazine and vice chair of the Watford and Three Rivers Commissioning Locality Board, is one of them.

In this HSJ Podcast, Dr Khan discusses Sandberg’s theory of “leaning in”. She explains the leadership styles emerging from a new generation of women doctors, how they achieve a work-life balance and how they are building “portfolio careers” in order to make the climb to the top much more seamless.

These new female health leaders are digitally savvy, managing bold and influential networks via supper clubs and online groups.

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