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I am so proud to see HSJ taking keen interest on women in leadership and nice to see some hard evidence. It would be nice if HSJ publishes similar details for BME staff in leadership position and I am sure that that will also be interesting. But I rarely see any Journal, Trade Union or NHS Institution doing this because it is easy to talk about women but difficult to talk about race and ethnicity.
Please do not take my comments in any negative sense. Leaders must always be appointed only on the basis of merit and any positive and negative discrimination is bad for the society. But FMLM, Royal Colleges, HSJ and many other great Institutions are quick and comfortable to talk about women in leadership but sadly I see there is always hesitation and reluctance to talk about BME in leadership position. In my vast experience on leadership it is a sad reality that only 10% of doctors have leadership skills, attitude, attributes, aptitudes or willingness to sacrifices needed to be a good leader. A good leader is the one who has all the great characters of being a great doctor. One who is clinically very competent but also has great communication skills, inter-personal skills, leadership skills, assertiveness skills and one who is honest, sincere, kind, caring and compassionate but one who always puts patients at the heart of everything he/she does. By not appointing good doctors as leaders from BME and women pool we miss out on appointing 10,000 good doctors as leaders and sadly in their place we appoint someone who is not so good as leaders and this is why in some places NHS is mediocre in his performance.

Let us appoint leaders only on the basis of merit and not because they belong to a particular club, network, sex or ethnicity. We owe it to our patients, NHS and the profession to get the leadership right.