Today marks International Women’s Day 8th March, 2025. I am proud and privileged to join the 69th Meeting of the UN Commission on the Status of Women (CSW69) as a UN Women UK participant. Equality and women’s rights around the world are under threat. Never has it been more important to stand together as allies around the world, all genders, to protect women’s rights, freedoms and growth.
Yesterday I joined the opening ceremony of the UN CSW 69 inaugural meeting where they called on people around the world to join under the rallying theme “For ALL Women and Girls: Rights. Equality. Empowerment.”. They reminded us that this year’s International Women’s Day stands as a powerful reminder of progress made. However, we also reflected on how easily that progress can be reversed and the need to accelerate action. The UN called on everyone for “collective action – a pivotal moment to push forward, to mobilize global solidarity, and to honour decades of hard-fought advances”.
Women’s Health remains a critical issue with medical conditions being de-prioritised and underserved for too long. As a woman who has suffered from endometriosis, adenomyosis and polycystic ovary syndrome, as well as having ten rounds of IVF and five miscarriages, I know only too well it is not just the physical pain, but the mental anguish and harrowing impact on a woman’s life that means we need to start prioritizing women’s health.
A uterine artery embolization (UAE) transformed my own life with less than a fortnight recovery time, and yet so many women still do not have access to the full array of medical innovation that is being developed. For more than two decades parts of the month I simply could not leave the house due to the extreme bleeding and acute pain. I spent nights awake unable to escape the intensity of the waves of pain that I now know were actually my womb contracting to get rid of the adenomyosis. At times I honestly thought I might die, but I didn’t dare to go to the hospital. I have often reflected had I had access to innovation earlier in my life might I not have had fertility issues and recurrent miscarriage? I will never know.
Women’s health has been underserved for too long. Not only in conditions specific to women, but inclusion of women in clinical trials, in women-specific risk calculators, such as those used for heart disease, in diagnostic criteria that may be different in women and girls compared to men and boys, like ADHD and autism diagnosis definitions that are widely recognised as being based on boys.
Join me this International Women’s Day in this rally cry to advance both women’s health, and more generally women’s equality and rights across the spectrum.
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