What does International Women’s Day mean to me?

This may be a difficult read.

Growing Up

My childhood was very much centred around having to tip-toe around the man of the house. A strong man with a bad temper, who was also a coward. He’d pick on his daughter and wife to make himself feel important. There was no-one around to help, or stand up to him.

One day I decided not to tip-toe any more.

I roared.

I found my voice and I shouted him down.

After that we barely spoke. He pretty much left me alone. I was lucky, it could easily have gone the other way.

Employment

Fast forward to my career as an engineer in the defence sector. Having to work harder and achieve higher grades to be treated as still-not-quite-equal by many.

And, ahhh, the banter.

Don’t get me wrong – I could give as good as I got (I’d had plenty of practice whilst studying one of my A-levels at the boy’s school) – but it did get very waring. Especially when the Comments started when I became pregnant with my first baby. I was outright told I should stop eating because I was getting fat.

Ha. Ha.

And I could tell you many a story of my highly accomplished male counterparts who thought openly grading the female engineers out of 10 for looks was ok. Or the one who thought it was ok to call my personal phone at 1am, because he thought my private life was his business.  Or the short guy who thought shoving his face between my breasts when he turned up for a meeting was ok. Or the large guy who thought sitting next to me and undoing my bra was acceptable.

Health

The worst thing to happen was my misdiagnosis of appendicitis around 9 years ago. For SIX MONTHS. Repeated trips to the doctor, and eventually to A&E – to be told repeatedly it was constipation, sciatica, was I sure I wasn’t pregnant again?

In the end I couldn’t get out of bed without help, and I couldn’t walk without leaning on my son’s pushchair.

By the time I got treated my appendix had attached itself onto my gut. It was very serious and the operation to fix it was quite involved.

I was hospitalised for 5 days, and recovery was a slow process. I’m very lucky to be alive.

Later, I discovered I was repeatedly misdiagnosed because pretty much everything we know about anatomy and medicine (from symptoms of illnesses to how our bodies respond to medicine) is based on the male anatomy.

We still very much live in a male-dominated society, with inequality across the board, and because this is the norm, men (even the good ones) don’t necessarily see it.

International Women’s Day is so important to give us focus and acknowledge and face the disparity. To raise awareness and to continue to make the changes necessary.

We’ve come a long way, but there’s still a lot to do.