Restoring Trust Means Building Institutions Where Women Can Lead
EVIDENCE TO ACTION | Science Made Simple UNGA Edition | The State of Women Institute
By Dr. Odessa Lacsina, Executive Director, The State of Women Institute
This week, world leaders are gathered at the United Nations in New York. The theme of the 81st General Assembly is restoring trust. One of the conversations running through the week — anchored by the Gender Snapshot 2026, launched just days ago by UN Women and UN DESA — is about where women stand in leadership globally. The short answer is that progress has stalled. In many countries it is moving backward.
That backdrop makes a systematic review published September 1 in eClinicalMedicine, The Lancet's open-access journal, worth reading closely.
The Research
Researchers from Monash University and the University of Glasgow reviewed 57 studies evaluating 52 women's leadership development programs across 23 countries. Their central question was whether these programs — which organizations have invested in for decades — were producing measurable organizational change or simply changing individual women.
The finding deserves a full stop: most programs successfully built confidence, leadership skills, and professional networks in individual participants. Very few produced documented change at the organizational level. The structures those women returned to largely stayed the same.¹
The Pipeline Exists. The Progression Does Not.
This is the heart of it.
Women comprise 70 percent of the global health workforce. They hold roughly 25 percent of its leadership positions. In STEM more broadly, women make up 35 percent of graduates worldwide and 28 percent of the workforce — numbers that have improved slowly over decades — but they represent only 18 percent of director-level and above roles in technology.²
The pipeline exists. The progression does not.
The research points to why. The European Commission's own analysis, cited in the literature, identifies that systemic inequities in the workforce are perpetuated by gender-based barriers stemming from organizational constraints and culture, unrelated to individual capability.¹ What that means in practice is that sending a woman to a leadership program addresses her readiness while leaving untouched the promotion criteria, the meeting cultures, the sponsorship patterns, and the institutional norms that shape who actually advances. The program becomes a way of appearing to solve the problem without solving it.
The Economic Case — and Why It Hasn't Been Enough
The economic case for getting this right has been made repeatedly. The World Economic Forum's Global Gender Gap Report 2026 notes that hiring based on skills increases the proportion of women in candidate pools by 24 percent, and that closing the STEM gender gap could add trillions to global GDP.³ A 2020 McKinsey report found that organizations in the top quartile for gender diversity in executive teams were 25 percent more likely to have above-average profitability.⁴ Women-led clinical teams have been shown to improve patient outcomes. Women on research teams correlate with higher quality scientific output.
None of this is new information. What the September review adds is precision about why the gap persists despite the evidence: Interventions have been aimed at individuals rather than institutions. Fix the woman, not the system.
Commitments Are Not the Same as Architecture
The Gender Snapshot 2026 makes the same point at the global scale. Commitments are not the same as architecture. Representation is not the same as power. And programs designed to prepare women for institutions that were built around a different set of assumptions will keep producing the same result: better-prepared women encountering the same ceiling.²
What the research says actually works is less comfortable for organizations to hear: structural change, transparent promotion criteria applied consistently, sponsorship rather than mentorship alone, accountability mechanisms with teeth, and flexible work policies designed not as accommodations but as standard practice. These are not program costs. They are decisions about how an institution is willing to operate.
The world is in New York this week to talk about trust. In the context of women and science, women and leadership, women and the economy, the trust question is whether institutions are willing to move from running programs about women's leadership to building structures where women can lead.
The research suggests those are two different things. The data on where women actually end up suggests we have mostly been doing the first one.
Sources
¹ Morris D, Rauf S, Riach K, Teede H. "Women's leadership development programmes and gender equality: a systematic review in healthcare, academia and beyond." eClinicalMedicine (The Lancet). Published September 1, 2026. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eclinm.2026.104185
² UN Women and UN DESA. Gender Snapshot 2026. Launched September 17, 2026.
³ World Economic Forum. Global Gender Gap Report 2026.
⁴ Dixon-Fyle, S., Dolan, K., Hunt, V., & Prince, S. Diversity Wins: How Inclusion Matters. McKinsey & Company, May 2020. https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters
Additional data: UNESCO STEM data 2026.
Dr. Odessa Lacsina is the Executive Director of The State of Women Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit working across three health equity pillars: Mental Health & Wellness, Maternal Health Equity, and Preventive Wellness.
To learn more or support women's health leadership, visit thestateofwomen.org or follow @thestateofwomen.