Thanks so much to @ul_women_in_medicine for inviting me to speak this morning.
International Women’s Day is too often just a commercialised day where alot of companies make a big show that they support equity with balloons and cupcakes and purple banners…. but the next day go back to their gender pay gap, inadequate maternal leave, and glass ceilings.
Today, I celebrated the progress – BUT asked why the progress towards quality is so slow, a case of 2 steps forward, one step back.
Why is violence against women actually increasing?
Why the gender pay gap in this country is still 13.69%?
Why our Dáil is the least diverse parliamentary body in Western Europe?
Why companies that sell scrubs think they can get away with blatant exploitation of IWD by launching their new line with an ad targeting women released 48 hours ago?
Why in 2025 we have anti-DEI in medicine misinformation trending on certain social media platforms in the last week?
Why despite the increase in access to education 1 in 7 people in Ireland still do not have good health literacy, which disproportionately affects women as mothers and carers?
And yes, a doctor needs to talk about this. Because bias, povery, violence, discrimination, and access to correct health information has an affect on health.
But we all need to talk about it this #IWD2025 because current expert analysis suggests at the current rate of progress, it will be 60 YEARS before we have gender equality in Europe. Highly appropriate then that 30 years on from the major UN meeting on women’s equality in Beijing in 1995, we talk about the need to #accelerateaction
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