Discussing Diversity in Veterinary Practices

A diverse veterinary practice culture will be critical to delivering innovation to customers, and more importantly, to our livelihood as humans.

At Women in Leadership and Management in Animal Health (WILMAH), we share a unique dedication to the well-being of all animals, and a unique opportunity to help all women achieve success at every stage of their careers. WILMAH was founded to meet the needs of an increasing number of women who work in the animal health field and unite our members to provide professional resources, development and mentorship opportunities, a sense of community and advocacy. We have built a strong foundation to drive our pillars of personal development, mentorship, and community the past two years. Now in our junior year, we are positioned to be the advocates of all women in animal health and provide a platform to discuss real barriers and opportunities that women and minorities face within our industry in an honest and authentic way.

We are passionately committed to helping women rise up, developing the future generation of leaders, and creating an environment where equality for all people and gender parity is a reality. WILMAH promotes diversity and represents how a diverse culture will be critical to delivering innovation to our customers and more importantly to our livelihood as humans. Together, we stand against discrimination of any kind, in any form. Period.

However, upon reflection on recent events, our board feels we need to do better for our members, as well as our corporate partners, and we want to leverage our platform in more meaningful ways. We want to drive a relevant discussion on social injustice, deliver content that reflects how to address corporate change, continue to advocate for women, and inspire real transformation in how we are tackling diversity within our industry. Over the next few months, we will be extremely intentional in how we drive for this goal through our Diversity Summer Series and our Advocacy Pillar.

The Diversity Summer Series will kick off in July and will represent leaders within animal health to drive awareness and understanding, dialogue, and action as it relates to different minority group members of our industry. Details will be posted on our website at www.wilmah.org or look for our posts on LinkedIn and Facebook.

Our advocacy pillar has three critical parts that will launch in 2020 so that we can strive to achieve gender parity by 2025. We define gender parity as equal roles for women in all leadership positions.

Part 1: Benchmarking and data

WILMAH learned quickly we had a data issue within our industry. No one had benchmarked how many women held leadership roles within animal health outside of a few surveys that focused either on distribution or on the C-suite in large pharmaceutical companies. The challenge to strive for a goal becomes very clear when you do not know where you are starting from. Therefore, to help all companies better understand how your organization benchmarks against an industry as you strive for diversity and gender parity, WILMAH will be the conduit to collect the information.

Our goal is to collect a view of how many women are in the field, and how many women are represented at each level of management from first-line managers to executives. Your data will be anonymous to WILMAH and others, and we commit to never sharing sources. We hope you join us in seeing how valuable this data can be to each of your organizations, of whom we know many have active metrics to achieve a stronger presence of women in leadership roles within your company.

Part 2: Understanding barriers and opportunities

Better understanding gender inequalities through benchmarking only provides one piece of the story. There is a gap in our industry to uncover women leaders’ own perceptions of barriers leading to advancements in their careers. Due to this gap, WILMAH has begun to work on the women’s journey starting with our pillar of mentorship, a critical path identified by our membership to succeed in business. In the fall of 2019, our membership participated in a research project with Dr. Jessica Petty from Just Pursuits, LLC, to better understand how women are mentored differently from their male counterparts within animal health and ways to better drive our mentorship pillar specifically for women. We realized quickly that this was just the tip of the iceberg in better understanding the women’s journey and how it compared to other industries.

To continue to identify areas of growth, WILMAH is very excited to launch the first-ever women’s exploratory survey to better clarify the gender gap that exists, perceived barriers, and ways to engage lack of equal career advancement and gender bias within animal health for all women, including minorities. This survey will not be exclusive to women but will engage with men as well.

We are also excited to announce that Veterinary Advantage has agreed to help circulate the survey to their readers, and we hope that you will participate as well by sending the link to your employees as an opportunity to have their voice heard. All respondents will be anonymous and our third-party vendor will aggregate the data.

Part 3: Defining the path forward

At WILMAH, we know we do not hold all the answers, but we do feel we are uniquely positioned to provide a platform to drive a discussion on how we tackle diversity and inclusion within our industry. And we invite all of you to participate in this dialogue.

In November 2020, WILMAH will host the first Diversity and Inclusion workshop where we will not only deliver the results of Part 1 and 2, but encourage a discussion on ways to achieve our goals, both for WILMAH and within our individual organizations. We firmly believe we can be leaders as an industry on D&I topics, and by doing so, increase innovation and be the best for our customers, our employees, and the animals we serve.

Thank you for your dedication to women in leadership and advocacy for Diversity and Inclusion within animal health. For more information, visit wilmah.org.

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