Letter stressing the importance of the word woman in NHS communications

[2Rebecca]

Apologies if posted before. I couldn't see a post on it. Yesterday the Clinical Advisory Network on sex and Gender CAN-SG which I am involved in published an open letter to NHS chiefs in the UK stressing the reasons why the word woman should be retained in NHS campaigns and literature.
The letter is here can-sg.org/2023/02/23/open-letter-to-nhs-chiefs-the-importance-of-the-word-woman/ if anyone wants to see it

*support 🐕 dog

When my first DC was born we were in separate wards as both needed medical interventions. It always struck me that the use of the word mother was part of a conscious process by the midwives to help me connect with the baby I had given birth to and didn’t see for 12 hours. I was unconscious for the whole processs so I really did miss the whole transition into becoming a mother. The bond wasn’t instant so being called mum/mother helped

There are some societies where becoming a mother is an essential part of a woman's life. If she doesn't fulfill this, she's seen as a failure. By herself, as well as others. Not that this is my perspective in the least, but it is out there and in the UK too.

So this erasure of the word mother is denying these women their goal in life.

Yet more colonial behaviour from the allies.

Signed…. Thank you to everyone involved x

In The Telegraph and the DM today.
Well done.

www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/06/nhs-must-reinstate-woman-cancer-pregnancy-webpages-staff-demand/

Archive version.

archive.ph/2023.03.06-223213/www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2023/03/06/nhs-must-reinstate-woman-cancer-pregnancy-webpages-staff-demand/

Thank you for sharing. I found it utterly mind blowing that the NHS has been persuaded to take actions that are so blatantly anti women.

They haven’t touched the mens entries, just the women’s. Having previously worked in IT and looking at content etc, I can’t imagine how the asymmetry has not been raised.

When they discussed removing the word woman from entries like ovarian or cervical cancer, presumably a reason for the change was put forward. Why would that reason not apply to men? Why would they allow such inconsistency across the website?

It must have been a conscious decision otherwise it would have been changed back straightaway if it was just the actions of a rogue editor.

I hope those staff and decision makers are held responsible for any harm that has come of this.

The other issue within the NHS is/was the policy of exempting gay men from the normal blood donation standards if they say they are women and recording self declared gender instead of sex. This has the potential to cause serious harm to health. I don’t know if they have fixed that yet either.

The 'under review' bit is interesting as the NHS response. Months ago I read this and yet it must still be 'under review' if nothing's changed. Or, do the wheels of NHS gender revision move exceedingly slowly.

"I found it utterly mind blowing that the NHS has been persuaded to take actions that are so blatantly anti women."

I see it as more evidence of the NHS being sold off to US health companies: it has adopted policies designed to appeal to those companies.

Signed and circulated.

It surely is direct discrimination. I wonder if we could have a class action? There will be women out there who've been disadvantaged because of the lack of clarity in language and will have maybe missed screening but finding them will not be easy, of course.

I don't think they had a reason for the change except for 'inclusion' - ironically, as they exclude 50% of the population. It'll have been some employee who did it and wasn't challenged. No consideration of impact at all.

When people say the NHS wastes money it's this shit that they're talking about. How much time has been spent changing all this? How many women have been harmed and how much time will be spent reviewing, changing it back (as surely they must)? How many leaflets that cost money to print will now need to be binned? How many frontline nurses or paramedics could this have paid for? It's a complete scandal.

Well, after a bit of faff, I've signed the letter. I couldn't do it on the computer, as it only has the option to add your name and confirm via Gmail.

I finally remembered that I have an account on my phone and did it that way.

I'll prod my wife towards the petition later.

@RichardBarrister @dimorphism

A lot of this has been pushed through via the Rainbow Badge Accreditation scheme (funded by NHS England and managed by a consortium of LGBT organisations).

This FOI explains it in more detail and the hospital as helpfully included some of the materials that support hospitals seeking accreditation.

You can see that things like pronoun badges and use of gender neutral language helps score towards accreditation.

My hospital has recently had feedback on their application for the accreditation process and has narrowly missed Bronze status but say they now know what they need to work on for improvement on their next application.
I feel pronoun badges and email sign offs coming soon, not that I will be engaging of course.

But I think this means it's not just patient information provided by NHS England and other bodies, it will also be locally approved leaflets provided by individual hospitals.

www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/rainbowbadgeaccreditation_25#incoming-2096446

Screenshots

And here they are on Twitter.

twitter.com/rainbownhsbadge/status/1592086563160092673?s=46&t=VbXAeQjIZ-uhLquoQ0ovzA

And there's the issue, right there.

You can't defend women's rights and common sense as a rear guard action, when the same people are spending a lot of time and money on fucking about with extremist lobby groups with sparkly marketing.

The government need to get the lobby groups out of all public services, this is insidious.

In short it is deeply embedded into the NHS and will be very difficult to reverse to any meaningful extent.

Excellent letter, and I have signed with my name and profession (nurse).

We’ve had pressure on the ward to sign up to the rainbow badge pledge and wear one. I absolutely want to support any of my gay or lesbian patients (very often they introduce their life long partners to us as just a friend). However I also want to safeguard my female patients from having to share spaces with male patients or receive care from male staff who may identify as transwomen. I need female patients to know they can trust me to advocate for their rights.

This was on BBC2 just now! One of the clinicians behind the letter on Politics live.

If you put on iPlayer you should be able to rewind and still see it just now.

She was great!

Article in the Times today:
www.thetimes.co.uk/article/5458a8f8-bdf5-11ed-8959-aac6a1130ac2?shareToken=c3df43b9b2ea1e8ce2572dd4aa23ba39

Thank you for the share 💐

Good to see it's getting coverage