This year, International Women’s Day is themed around ‘Acceleration Action’. This highlights the need of making moves and clear steps to obtain gender equality. We have made huge strides in this area in the past decade, but it is evident that there is still a lot of work to do. For example, according to an article from the Economist Impact, “Over 85 million women aged 18+ across the 40 Health Inclusivity Index countries do not have access to basic women’s health services”.
Women’s health interventions include family planning, health services during and after pregnancy, health services during and after childbirth, paid parental leave, and prevention screening services. Having gaps in these interventions can lead to large income losses for employable women who are not working due to childcare responsibilities. According to the Economist Impact, in 2022 this added up to $12.6 billion in losses.
Policies around the world have been created to target improving women’s access to health services. For example, in Egypt, the Presidential Initiative for Women’s Health launched in 2019 has served around 34 million women and helped in areas such as early detection, data management, and training medical teams. At a different end of the spectrum, Slovenia passed legislation and created different programs to reduce barriers when it comes to the gender pay gap (now less than 5%, one of the lowest in the EU).
Here at Complete Anatomy, we are providing today’s health professional students with access to tools like Complete Anatomy. This provides them with accurate, realistic, and up-to-date information on female anatomy. We believe that by having this tool available from their first day of school, it will result in better outcomes for women in future clinical settings long-term.
By focusing on the “Acceleration Action’ plan this International Women’s Day, we can work to create a more equitable world for women today and in the future! Addressing systemic biases that are faced both in healthcare and professionally for women can help speed up the progress we have made.
