Gordon Miles, March 08, 2022

It is International Women’s Day (IWD) today!

The College fully supports IWD and Embraces Equity to forge a path for people who identify as women to thrive in their careers and bring positive change through diversity and inclusivity:  #EmbraceEquity.

International Women’s Day (IWD) is well-known in most countries. The International Women’s Day (March 8th) is celebrated around the world and focuses on the social, economic, cultural and political achievements of women. The day also marks a call to action for accelerating gender parity.

The day has occurred for well over a century, with the first IWD gathering in 1911 supported by over a million people in Austria, Denmark, Germany and Switzerland. Today, IWD is a global movement that crosses barriers of culture, religion,  politics and colonialism to drive a better, safer and equitable future where identifying as a woman no longer has to be a protected characteristic but a celebrated personality.

So What’s It About?

Here’s a few aspects of IWD:

• The rise of women is not about the fall of men
• Everyone can play a role in forging gender equity
• Gender balance is not solely a women’s issue, but also an economic issue
• What is bias and how does it play out?
• Advocacy, inclusive mindsets and tangible action are needed from all of us

Why Equity and not Equality

Equality means that each individual or group are given the exact same resources or opportunities. 

Equity realises that everyone comes from different circumstances and therefore allocates resources and opportunities effectively to reach an equal outcome.  

To understand this difference fully and in context – IWD have a great section on this – check the website out:

https://www.internationalwomensday.com/Missions/18707/Equality-versus-Equity-What-s-the-difference-as-we-EmbraceEquity-for-IWD-2023-and-beyond

I’m proud that at RCEM we have a strong presence from women across the organisation. 71% of our employees are women and our senior team of Directors contains 2 women out of a team of 3.

That said, we are not regarding our job as done: there is more to do. The fact that we are well represented across our employees is great but we want to encourage more women into management positions. To help with this we have a positive approach to learning and development.

Amongst the specialty of emergency medicine it is noticeable to me that we are making progress.  On our Council and Board more women are present than in the past.  There is more to do of course as we want wider representation across all College Committees and there are over 60 to choose from.

One issue that makes reporting difficult is that we do not hold information on all our members as to how they identify their gender or indeed their ethnicity or any other protected characteristics. It would be really helpful to us to understand this more so we can shape our work – if you would like to update your membership records or check what information is recorded in our database follow this link to complete the set of demographic questions.

For example, I was involved in the process that led to our Board appointments and was working on the basis that our Board of 12 people is 50:50 male:female but because the data is incomplete the picture is not so clear cut. 

Our reporting shows the following:

	Male	Female	Other Gender	Not Disclosed
Trustee Board	3	2	0	7
Council	10	6	0	16
Executive Committee	6	3	0	7

So there is work to do to encourage Board, Council and Executive Committee members to update our records to complete the data so we can see a true picture of where are. That will help us decide on what further work we need to do to tackle areas of under-representation.   That reporting gap is one we have been trying to address across our wider membership with #CountMeIn campaign to encourage our members to complete the set of demographic questions.

Gender Equity Committee

We are very fortunate to have an active and engaged Gender Equity Committee (GEC) who are working to help us address and challenge gender stereotypes and gender bias in the specialty. They will have their first meeting of the year as the GEC to devise a medium to long term strategy devoted to this work.  Their previous work as the Women’s SIG has involved delivering Gender Equity Days and successfully delivering a track at the Annual Scientific Conference – exposing the endemicity of sexism in EM and tackling the gender pay gap.

What can men do to help?

I’m sometimes asked what men can do to help with this important work. Rather than feel it is not our issue to campaign and support, there is a role for men as advocates and champions of change. This has been recognised as a major contributor in helping accelerate women’s equity.

Embracing diversity makes it better for everyone as highlighted in this report by McKinsey’s:

https://www.mckinsey.com/~/media/McKinsey/Featured%20Insights/Diversity%20and%20Inclusion/Diversity%20wins%20How%20inclusion%20matters/Diversity-wins-How-inclusion-matters-vF.pdf

Many progressive influential leaders have committed via formal public channels to helping build diverse and inclusive organisations that challenge stereotypes and bias.

Here at the College our President and I have made this commitment. We are working to make RCEM ever more inclusive. We all have a part to play. Tackling unconscious everyday sexism and recognising the role of intersectionality is an important area which we need to continue to work on. The path to women’s equality has been long and challenging and the work is not done, it is in progress.

Adrian Boyle, our President commented: “I live in a house as the only male, not only do I have two daughters but the dogs and even the guinea pigs are female, so the day of the woman happens regularly. However, I am increasingly aware of, and sensitive to, how unconscious bias can create sexism in the workplace. Little of this is malicious or even intentional, and we all make mistakes. I recently put out a trauma call and all the relevant specialties turned up, none of whom I had met before. As I started the pre-arrival briefing, I made the assumption that the tall man with big biceps was the orthopaedic registrar. He was the anaesthetic registrar, the petite female orthopaedic registrar next to him was gracious and sanguine about my mistake. I was mortified by this, but many of us will have been in this position. If we value flat hierarchies in our specialty, then we must be aware of the cultural barriers that can, unconsciously, impede us. Women are set to make up more than half the emergency medicine workforce, our workplaces need to feel fair.” 

Let’s celebrate today

Today and every day, let’s amplify the voices of women, challenge gender stereotypes, and break down barriers that hold women back. To all the incredible women who have fought for gender equality, and continue to do so today: Thank you. Let’s keep pushing towards a world where every woman has the freedom and opportunity to pursue her dreams.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Gordon Miles CEO