GE Healthcare President and CEO John Flannery is confident the healthcare industry will drive more women in the United States and around the world into leadership positions.

Firsr, he provides  some gloomy facts:

• Of the 5.8 billion people around the world with limited access to healthcare, women and their children are disproportionately impacted.

• Two and a half times as many adolescent girls in sub-Saharan Africa are infected with HIV versus boys of the same age.

• 830 women in mostly developing nations die from preventable causes during pregnancy or childbirth every day.

• Women contribute $3 trillion to the global healthcare industry, but nearly half of their work is unpaid. Women hold only 38 percent of the top global health jobs.

Flannery asks:

“How can we expect to address the challenges that one of the world’s most vulnerable populations faces when that population itself is not equally represented within the decision-making sphere?”

He responds:

“In our business – when healthcare is so personal – we can’t.”

Flannery points to a recently launched GE Healthcare initiative with Tata Trusts in India to train 10,000 young people In various technology areas of healthcare.

“Our aim is for at least 50 percent  of these trainees to be women,” Flannery writes. “This effort is one piece of a $1 billion commitment we made to train more than 2 million healthcare technology professionals.”

Flannery published his take on gender equity and why it's critical on  a LinkedIn Pulse post.

[See also: GE Healthcare launches $50 million technology accelerator.] and [New CEO takes reins at GE Healthcare.]