Another International Women’s Day rolls round, and it’s time for reflection. I challenge us to consider:
What networks are we in, do we create, are adopted into, influence membership of?
How aware are we of our own biases?
I’ve met, learned from and been inspired by a great number of incredible women that I’ve had the honour of meeting and working with through this elected role. That both sought me out, or supported my approaches and requests. Not least, powerhouse GP and Long Covid activist Dr Amy Small, who got me involved in BMA work post Romney review. My Scottish Council colleague, ED doc and hugely knowledgeable SLNC forum Chair Dr Lailah Peel. And more recently, my old friend Dr Joanna Bredski, Consultant Psychiatrist and fiercely intelligent Deputy Chair of the Scottish Consultants Committee. When I consider what my next step should be on an issue, or what position I should take on something, I channel their tenacity, strength and clear sightedness.
And how fortunate I am that they are but three inspirational “BMA women” showing up and “doing the work” in spite of, rather than because of our systems. How do we build on their work?
Women have been or felt forced out of BMA and medical work too many times, and women doctors in the UK still struggle to feel seen, valued and represented. This issue cannot be simply “women’s work”. Which, across genres, we expect for free – childcare (the elephant in the room), emotional labour eg gift organising, social committees, all the “soft skills” and social oil that make organisations flow. My brilliant colleagues elsewhere will explore more explicitly the issue of intersectionality, where we stack and compound privilege or lack thereof.
I certainly don’t derive any financial benefit from my elected BMA role (the opposite in fact). Changes proposed by the BMA must be mindful that our system (designed to acknowledge the great amount of work required of elected representatives to carry out their role) should not set back our progress away from making said union activity an ‘expensive hobby for well-off, able-bodied men with good family support systems’.
How can it be that so many women doctors predictably and routinely experience the same financial, contractual and digital poor employment practices (wrong maternity pay, email accounts deleted, I could go on) in 2024, as in 2014, and 2004. And that we don’t always “get it right first time” when these doctors approach our BMA FPOC employment advisors?
How can it be that a popular medicopolitical pressure group present an all male candidate endorsed slate for recent Scottish representative elections and there isn’t an uproar?
How can it be that we are not absolutely mortified by the glaring gender imbalance in our senior leadership roles in medicine and in our union, amongst committee chairs, and the predominance of male voices in meetings and on list servers?
I’ve been in the privileged position of feeling empowered to feed back in the strongest possible terms about the treatment of women within our own union. And yet, I remain to be convinced that it was BMA structures that facilitated this. We absolutely must get our own house in order. Another IWD called on #HeForShe ‘allyship’ and this remains both true and crucial today.
We are so far past the stage of gathering evidence that diversity is better for organisations and better for society. Diversity triggers an extra level of care in information processing (go read about why where you store your ketchup matters – no, really!) Repeated headlines tell us about (for example) better outcomes for women surgeons on one hand, and the gender pay gap and sexual assault and harassment at work, on the other. The cognitive dissonance is staggering.
Obama’s government brought us “amplification”. When a woman staffer made a key point, other women present would repeat it, giving credit to its author, forcing the men in the room to recognise the contribution (as well as denying them the chance to claim the idea as their own).
In that vein, I take the liberty of closing this blog with the words of Kenyan poet, playwright and activist, Shailja Patel. If we are serious about the work of inspiring inclusion, we would do well to pay heed to this powerful (wo)manifesto:
Read women.
Cite women.
Credit women.
Teach women.
Publish women.
Present women.
Acknowledge women.
Award women.
Amplify women.
Hire women.
Support women.
Promote women.
Hear women.
Believe women.
Follow women.
Pay women.
Pay women.
Pay women.
Dr Nóra Murray-Cavanagh, GP, Scottish Council
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