16Jan 2018 by Becky No Comments

Start 2018 right: pledge to actively support diversity!

Women, World
Following the #WDP36 list of women in drowning prevention, I posted on how to be an ally to under-represented groups.  Soon after that, I was approached by SOBRASA, a Brazilian drowning prevention organisation,.  They wanted to encourage individuals and organisations to take the five steps towards diversity that were listed in that blog.  Together we came up with the graphic below and already, drowning prevention organisations across the world have pledged to actively support diversity. If you want to help your organisation grow by becoming more diverse and inclusive, pledge here. [emailpetition id="1"]  
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14Dec 2017 by Becky 2 Comments

How to be an ally

Women, World
Following on from the publication of the #WDP36 list two weeks ago, some men have asked what they can do to support women around them and increase the representation of women in leadership positions. Old rich white men dominate drowning prevention. Young black people dominate the drowning fatalities. If the drowning prevention community wants to achieve a significant global reduction in drowning, then the community needs to be more inclusive and more diverse. It needs to listen to voices from different countries, diverse backgrounds, different genders, and different experiences. The fact that people are asking how they can support that is testament to their commitment to improve diversity. The question is what that commitment should look like. Let’s start by defining the problem: Think about the positions that you hold…
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30Nov 2017 by Becky 6 Comments

#WDP36 – More than a popularity contest…

Water, Women
In 2015, the first Women in Global Health list was published. It was a list of 100 leading women working in global health, and it has since grown to include more notable women in the field. It was started by Ilona Kickbusch, Director of the Global Health Programme at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. She was bored of attending conferences and panels where she was the only woman speaker. She decided that she needed to showcase women in global health and asked her Twitter followers to nominate women to the list. The idea caught on and the list grew. At the World Conference on Drowning Prevention 2017 in Vancouver, Canada, a similar Twitter campaign was run using #WDP36 to find a list of 36 leading…
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25Jan 2017 by Becky No Comments

Trump vs Women Round 1: The “A” bomb

Women, World
One of President Trump’s first acts in the White House was to reinstate the Mexico City Policy, or “the global gag rule”.  The policy is reinstated and revoked every time the White House changes from Democrat to Republican and back.  That’s because the subject of the policy, abortion, is a highly politicised topic in America. The policy means that NGOs that receive US foreign aid funding are not allowed to provide or promote abortions.  It was first instated by Reagan in 1984 and it essentially exports the US debate on abortion.  Sadly, that has dramatic negative effects on the health of women the world over.  NGOs that provide family planning services now have a choice to make.  Either they need to drop abortions from the suite of family planning options that…
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02Mar 2016 by Becky No Comments

Mind the confidence gap

Women
Last week I went to assessment centre for a role that involved leading teams and projects within an international development organisation. Speaking to others towards the end of the day about how they thought their one-to-one interviews went, I noticed something. The male candidates were extremely up-beat about their interviews whilst the women were significantly more reserved. A few of these women ended up having a brief discussion about how well they thought they sell themselves and again the outcome was not positive. They found it difficult to give themselves credit for their contribution to work as part of a team, they perceived many of their achievements as less down to their own knowledge and skills than a good dose of luck and generally, they disliked the feeling of arrogance…
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