AEA submission to Women and Equalities Select Committee Inquiry: Changing the perfect picture: an inquiry into body image
Read the submission by AEA Alliance (docx file).
Incorrect guidance by EHRC and GEO
AEA Director, Ann Sinnott, summarises in this article: The Equality Act is Being Undermined by Official Guidance.
The Health Gap
Lynn Enright’s experience of intense pain, previously dismissed by medical practitioners, eventually led to a hysteroscopy to examine the inside of her womb. This experience prompted Enright to search for research data on pain and women’s health. She was shocked by how little she found. Her book ‘Vagina: A Re-education’ is the result – which has won the Hearst Big Book Awards 2019 for ‘Women’s Health Book of the Year’.
Enright found that less than 2.5% of publicly-funded research1 is dedicated solely to reproductive health, despite the fact that one in three women in the UK2 will suffer from a reproductive or gynaecological health problem. She also found that there is five times more research into erectile dysfunction, which affects 19% of men, than into premenstrual syndrome, which affects 90% of women3.
1. UK Health Research Analysis 2014, UK Clinical Research Collaboration 2015
2. Survey reveals women experience severe reproductive health issues
3. Why do we still not know what causes PMS?
‘Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men’ by Caroline Criado Perez, reviewed by Joan Smith, Literary Review, Mar 2019:
‘Invisible Women‘ appears at a moment when our rights are under attack, not least in the USA, where the arrival of the Trump administration has given fresh wind to attempts to restrict abortion. Anyone who doubts that we live in a world designed by and for men needs to read this book, with its implicit message that even what we’ve won so far can never be taken for granted.
Excerpt from Literary Review article by Joan Smith
Read the full review or buy the book from independent online bookseller, Hive.co.uk.