Friday 8th March will mark International Women’s Day 2024, with the campaign theme for this year being to ‘Inspire Inclusion’ – and the wider aim of the event to identify, celebrate and increase the visibility of women’s achievements to forge equality.

This item serves to share how the organisation will be marking the occasion and how you can get involved, as well as outline some of our plans from a staff health and wellbeing perspective to help sustain our commitment to continuing to combat gender bias and discrimination and support our women at Gateshead Health.

IWD 2024 Events:

Women’s Network Stall:

To mark International Women’s Day, our Women’s Network are holding a get together in The Hub at the QE Hospital on the day itself, where you’ll be able to find them around between 12:00pm – 2:00pm promoting their work.

Those looking to join our Women’s Network can learn more at the stall – and there’s even the chance to join as the Network’s new Chair – so do pop along if you’d like to learn more about the role.

Celebrating International Women’s Day 2024 (NHS Confederation):

Prior to our stall on-site, the Health and Care Women Leaders Network will gather over Zoom between 10:00am – 12:00pm to celebrate International Women’s Day. The call will feature guest speakers such as Samantha Allan, Chief Executive Designate for the North East and North Cumbria ICB; Tracie Joliff, Head of Inclusive Leadership and System Development for NHS England; Amanda Pritchard, Chief Executive for NHS England and many others.

On the call, the network will highlight the work that is ongoing to progress gender equality and enhance inclusivity for women working in healthcare. Highlights will include a presenttion on the Shuri Network’s efforts to advance diversity and inclusion in the digital workforce; a panel discussion on male allyship and more. All are welcome and to book your spot, just visit this link.

Our plans:

Back in December, it was revealed that Gateshead Health had received £250,000 worth of investment for women’s health hubs in the local area. The project feeds into the organisation’s ambition to improve women’s health across the area, and acted as an important step towards becoming the Northern Centre of Excellence for Women’s Health that we’d like to be.

As part of this ambition, it has become clear that we could and should expand our support offering for staff in regards to women’s health matters – to reflect that organisational knowledge, expertise and support internally and ensure this is to the benefit of our colleagues as well as our patients.

In recognition of this, Women’s Health has become one of our ‘top 5’ campaigns for 2024 as part of our organisational commitment to continuing to progress through the various tiers of the Better Health at Work Award.

To this end, we are currently focusing in on the priority areas listed within the NHS England Women’s Health Strategy and building a portfolio of resources, signposting and support for our colleagues. This work is already underway and will be hosted in our new Women’s Health area, with pages on support for menopause and violence against women already up and live and with many more – such as pages on ageing, long-term conditions, cancers, fertility, menstrual health, mental health and more to follow.

We’d appreciate your feedback and input on our work to improve women’s health support at Gateshead, so if you have any ideas or specific requests, please do let us know by getting in touch on [email protected].