Happy International Women's Day!

Developing our Women in Digital Special Interest Group

*Trigger warnings in article on sexism in the workplace, diversity, miscarriage and menopause

A very good morning and what a Friday to celebrate International Women's Day. Here's recognising all the incredible women in our network!

My name is Aasha Cowey and I am a Co-Chair of the South East Digital Skills Development Network and I am delighted to bring you news on the launch of our Women in Digital Special Interest Group.

What we are trying to do

This International Women’s Day, I’m really pleased to share that the South East Digital Skills Development Network in collaboration with the South West Digital Health & Care Skills Development Network have been developing a ‘Women in Digital’ webinar series, with future aspirations to set up a Special Interest Group.

Each network runs an exciting annual programme of conferences and events respectively, and they aim to help every colleague realise their potential, strengthen their knowledge and follow their aspirations. We do this by providing a diverse and high-quality range of training, events and networks that is underpinned by our NHS values, high expectations and standards. We have decided to collaborate on this important area to promote and support the development of a more diverse digital workforce working in health and care in both regions. We are also two networks in similar stages with our levels of maturity, so we hope this will also help us to build our communities going forwards.

Personal Experience

The campaign theme for International Women’s Day 2024 is #InspireInclusion. My reflections are from fairly early on in my career, it was not unusual for me to be the only, or one of a few women in the room. Although sometimes it feels better, I still frequently find myself in this position. There are many implications of this, from the impact on decision making not being representative to how intimidating these spaces may feel for women who may not feel heard, or like they belong, or like they matter. It is important that we get this right both for now and to inspire future generations. I think there are three main areas I’d reflect on from my personal experience.

The first are the behaviours sometimes expected of you as a woman. Some of this may include things like being expected to do the minutes, make the coffee, take on the actions. The latter is something I still grapple with a lot! I also reflect on times I have been called up on my attitude because I simply questioned the status quo, and it did not go down well. I find it really hard to not speak up if I feel like something isn’t quite right (see personal blogs and exploration of ‘belief’ at the moment) – so I have found myself in this situation more than once. Once I was pretty much told I should have apologised in the open forum. I fundamentally made a man look bad, and it went down like a lead balloon. We have to make diversity of thought and opinion welcome – and ensure our opinions are seen as equal weight in terms of value. There are probably a number of things to explore here including confidence and imposter syndrome although we must ensure making our spaces inclusive and welcoming are just as, if not more important than the opportunity to ‘fix’ women. I really like the approach of leaning into strengths because this enables a focus on being your authentic self and not trying to fit a mould, a mould that you shouldn’t have to fit.

The second are the societal expectations and assumptions of being a woman, and I’d argue these perceptions are very much real. I recall two particular moments in my career which sadly had a long lasting negative impact on me having a healthy relationship with work and going onto be a mum later on. In one of my first NHS roles, I must have been about 23 at the time, I went around to the wards in the hospital with my new manager being introduced to all the clinical leads I would be working with. The first thing one of the male consultations said to my manager – so not even to my face! – was ‘when is this one going to go off and have babies then’. Then everyone laughed. It was a funny and totally normal comment. One of my other early memories is being part of an interview panel as a junior member of staff (this new colleague would be my peer) and two managers discussing the fact this candidate would likely have babies in the next year or two. They however concluded they were the best candidate so should give them the job. Technically they hadn’t done anything illegal – but the conversation felt discriminatory and very inappropriate. I couldn’t believe they were having it so openly – perhaps I was or am na?ve. I wasn’t having the best time myself in this role and I’d like to think I’d have called it out if they’d not been appointed, but to be honest I felt pretty scared and this is before the days I felt confident enough to lean into that belief.

Things have happened later on too, but I was fortunate enough by this point – although upsetting – to realise it says more about other people than myself. However, those early interactions can really cause damage later on. I remember taking my wedding ring off for a job interview, and spending a disproportionate time of my pregnancy and maternity leave really worried about how I had killed my career. In hindsight, that’s so sad.

The third and final thing for me is then the implications of women’s health in general. I sadly went through recurrent miscarriage after having my daughter. Perhaps it was easier to do this because I already had her and I had processed a lot of my fears – I’m not sure – but I ended up being very open about it each time with my colleagues. I will add my colleagues at both South, Central and West and then later at Surrey and Borders Partnership NHS Foundation Trust were both incredibly supportive and I couldn’t have asked for a better reaction from them. This was around the point in my career I’d realised I wasn’t going to ‘confirm’ or mask what was really going or how I felt – to be honest because it was so emotionally draining! I did however reflect on if that had been a few years previously, I would have gone through all of that pain (physical and emotional) in secret because I’d have been too scared to out myself as wanting to start a family and how that might damage my career prospects.

Then beyond pregnancy – not everyone can or indeed wants to have children so it’s important to not just focus on this – were all of the hormonal fluctuations I experienced. Although strangely enough, I only picked this up by chance when I was tracking my cycles with the intent to have another baby. As part of this I realised a lot of my anxiety spikes and migraines were centred around my cycle. Understanding this better, and having autonomy with my calendar to work around things as I need to, makes me so much more productive, dedicated and happy at work. I feel optimistic that as I face peri-menopause and menopause, the stronger awareness out there will make managing this at work so much easier. It’s not something I had appreciated when I was a 20-something management trainee.

These will not be the experience of all women but they are the three broad areas I reflect on personally. We each have our own experiences, and our own reactions to them. There are also factors outside of our control sometimes including the particular work environment we are operating in. However what we can do is talk more about is and create spaces to empower, inspire and support each other. We will also bring various data and studies into these sessions – the combination of data and anecdotal stories are very powerful.

So what next?

It’s always a bit tricky to get started with something like this, and we cannot assume we know what the needs are of individuals out there. We hope that developing a webinar series will help to create some initial spark and interest, allowing us to both identify members of that ongoing Special Interest Group as well as allow us to better scope what our special interest group can offer which meets a need and isn’t duplicating what is already out there. One of the practical things is that we can use our learning to influence future learning opportunities provided by the Skills Development Network, which may sometimes be additional events on certain topics or could even be the exploration of formal but bespoke training.

If you are interested in being part of one of our sessions as a presenter or panellist, please do get in touch and we would love to hear from you! We hope to share sign-up details in the coming weeks with the actual series likely to commence around May 2024. Draft topics in our agenda include hearing from existing networks supporting women in digital, exploring our strengths as women, overcoming imposter syndrome (and guilt!), the importance of allyship and breaking down barriers for careers which continue to be very male-dominated.

Happy International Women’s Day!

Reminder: You can sign up to your local Skills Development Network at www.skillsdevelopmentnetwork.com and if you want to sign up to the South East region newsletter, you can do so by clicking here.