Not allowed to run a women's health event at work

[Iamsorryyes]

And I work in a hospital!

I'm a HCP and currently have to work alongside our Equality and Inclusion Team. My colleagues are putting the brakes on an event for women's health because the title isn't inclusive and want to change the name to something else that is non binary. What can I say? Help me form my argument please?

EDI is important for many reasons, but when it comes to the issues around XX/XY and the sex specific health needs of individuals they fail spectacularly.

I would point out that the specific sexed health needs of women are very different from men. For example, my dad has prostate cancer. I don't have a prostate because I am a woman. Therefore I will not get prostate cancer. But! I do have a cervix (long retired) and I have smear tests to monitor for cervical cancer. No male has to undergo those tests. It's that simple.

I hate terms like womb-carriers and penis havers so you might, unfortunately, have to miss off the term Woman altogether and get around it by only mentioning the specific conditions and procedures. It's a PITA and EDI have too much power in institutions but it might be a case of having to suck it up...for now. I'm hopeful for change, but it's going to take time.

"those who identify as women" What shite.

i started by thinking that the parameters and descriptions of the course were ridiculous and harmful to women. Two issues that have arisen on these posts have changed my mind. There are different aspects being dealt with here: who is the event for and what information is being given. Having read that women on here and, therefore, presumably men as well, don’t know that men can get breast cancer has been illuminating but alarming. Secondly, I was interested to read that one poster had experience of men attending a menopause event and being enlightened by it. This, I suggest, is to the benefit of both sexes.

It seems to me that you are being handed on a plate a golden opportunity to explain sex based differences and similarities, from which both sexes will benefit.

Let them all come and grasp this opportunity with both hands.

Why would it be called women's health...

I presume because it relates to something that only affects a woman's physiology, but which men are invited to because it would perhaps be useful to raise men's awareness of such things (endometriosis being one example of a debilitating condition about which most men are uninformed).

...it tells you nothing.

It tells you that it's about women's health, that it's about something that affects ONLY women.

The role of the EDI lead in this situation is reminiscent of “the Party man” in authoritarian regimes like the USSR and North Korea.

When I visited the Stasi museum in Berlin over a decade ago, I thought it would be an interesting couple of hours. I didn’t grasp that it would be an education that I would keep referring back to for many years to come. And that many many people refuse to learn from history and we are indeed as a society doomed to repeat the errors of previous generations.

I don’t think anyone’s suggested this but how about using ‘living in female bodies’? EDI types love that phrasing.
so something like:

women’s heath event
Focused on those living in female bodies
open to all

Clunky but clear I guess?

Jesus, the contortions we have to twist ourselves into to avoid using the word Woman.
What very strange times we’re living in.

Oh I see thanks. So a woman’s ‘problem’ but all invited. Thanks

I wonder how much time this EDI lead is spending on the absolute fucking national scandal that is the mortality rate for black women in maternity services?

Our EDI lead virtue signals about Black women but only because he can't stand mentioning women without adding something. I don't think he cares about Black women in the slightest, he just can't let the work 'woman' go without adding something to it. I think he thinks he's intersectional while not doing the smallest things to actually improve outcomes.

I'm not sure if that will be enough.

The drive behind that is to prevent women from naming their issues as they wish, stop them from excluding men, and to make damn sure women bow down and take a subordinate position to anything close to rainbow related.

Women’s health. It should just be called women’s health, for crying out loud. Not female bodies or body parts or people with a cervix or any of that nonsense.

EDI needs to get back to its original purpose - it used to be a force for good (disabled rights, racial equality, women’s equality, gay rights etc) and now through transgenderism it’s actively excluding women and dehumanising them. That is not inclusive.

The fact the whole event could be in jeopardy - women excluded altogether because of a kerfuffle over the name? Have these EDI people lost their minds?

Frustrating as hell.

Could you just head it "for all women" or even "for all kinds of women" to make it SOUND as if you are going to include men?

All kinds of women… 😖

NO JUST NO FFS. There is only one definition of woman.

https://sex-matters.org/posts/healthcare/sex-based-language-matters-in-healthcare-webinar/

It needs to be inclusive of people with learning disability or low literacy or English as a 2nd language so using an incomprehensible word salad title is not inclusive - worth pointing this out to the DEI team.

There should also be women's only menopause events as I can't think of anything worse that discussing dry vaginas in from of a male manager

renaming it risks an alternative form of discrimination: against those with e.g. dyslexia or those without as much education or those with English as a foreign language.

Exactly! All those groups mean nothing to the ironically titled ‘diversity’ crew — whose policies actually restrict inclusiveness and leave out those who are most in need.

And that’s likely to be far more people than those who will have the vapours at being reminded they have sex-specific body parts.

I'm quite shocked to come on FWR and find these sorts of responses (except RedToothbrush and a few others). Get off your knees. Women's health is women's health.

I currently contract for a global US company which is pronoun friendly and EDI / Allyship drenched and THEY had a Women's Health seminar the other day. If they can do it a NHS (I'm presuming) hospital can do it.

I would raise a grievance against the EDI lead for indirect sexism and report to EHRC.

But I always favour the nuclear option.

EDIs time has come and very much gone - expect major firms to kick it in the bin and for the government to very rightly, get rid of it for cost cutting reasons.

It does annoy me that so many women on MN accept substandard health care and do so saying they are just grateful to have that.

They don't complain. And they need to.

The issue that the NHS is set up to prevent complaints and then when you do complain to get you do abandon the complaint rather than to deal with the complaint.

You really have to be forceful and push it. That's not how women are socialised. They are socialised to 'not be difficult'.

And this is part of why we had Bounty roaming freely in maternity wards and why we've had repeated maternity scandals.

You only have to look at posts from women on MN who feel they don't have a complaint even though they've not been asked for consent at appropriate times and they feel 'silly' about it even though they are really upset.

Poor practice is a feature of women's healthcare. The stats show in multiple different ways that women's healthcare is poorer. And STILL we don't feel it's legitimate to stand up for women's healthcare. Even down to rolling over and accepting that we can't have the word 'woman' for a woman's healthcare workshop.

Black women and women from ethnic backgrounds have the poorest outcomes in maternity. This is usually centred over lack of English skills. The drive for 'inclusive' gender woo language is NOT coming from this group. It is coming from a white middle class who have better outcomes.

Who is the target market for this workshop? Who has the poorest health outcomes? If you are already engaged with health services (so taking medication) you tend to have better outcomes because you are 'known' and know the system. Those who fail to attend and don't attend are not those begging HCPs to change their sex.

I honestly think the OP should go away and look at the women whose groups most marginalised and have the poorest women's health outcomes and how/way and to throw that in the face of the EDI manager and effectively show why inclusive language doesn't work and argue that you feel it can actually can lead to disengagement because people feel they are about to be lectured on gender woo rather than be informed about women's health.

Seriously. Enough of this shit.

It is insane but almost everything has to get the green light from Equality and there is a political agenda to it all.

So as suspected this isn't about women, or even actual inclusivity, this is a politcal agenda warping the purpose and function of the health service.

This is unacceptable.

It is one thing having equality training, awareness raising, but it is absolutely not acceptable for someone who is not on the frontline to presume to tell frontline staff how they deliver the health support they are trained in and experienced in giving.

I think this is a HR issue. That a member of staff is effectively being threatened by another member of staff. And that staff member is as the health professional best placed to design and present the event.

NB as OP said earlier, this is an event women patients have requested. Are you saying that a group of patients from a specific ethnic community that are known to have a higher rate of a particular condition would be told they dont have the right to an event aimed at their community.

This isn't just about the actual EDI person, but the senior management who have allowed, or given the impression that they have the ultimate say so.

Outrageous.