12 Women speakers in healthcare: taking steps towards equal gender representation at all health care conferences and events

Women represent an increasing proportion of the health and social care workforce, yet remain underrepresented on boards and in senior NHS leadership positions.1 There is thus a high probability that conference organisers trying to convene well-known speakers will find themselves with a ‘manel’ (an all-male panel of speakers), or a significantly gender-imbalanced lineup. Conferences offer unrivalled opportunities to showcase diversity and inclusivity, to network and as a lever for cultural and organisational change. Speakers and panels should model what we want our future health and social care workforce to look like. Token women representatives or waiting for change are insufficient. Women Speakers in Healthcare was co-founded by 5 NHS healthcare professionals, with a vision to ensure balanced gender representation at all healthcare conferences and events, with parity of opportunity for all. We are actively promoting and raising the profile of women speakers by: Creating the UK’s largest database of women speakers in healthcare; Providing development and training opportunities to inspire and enable women and Engaging women speakers and male allies through networking and collaboration. To-date, WSH has 1761 Twitter followers, 390 women speakers signed up to the database and has facilitated conference-speaker connections. We encourage all forms of diversity, are actively engaging male allies and encourage speakers and supporters to nominate other women speakers. We aspire to continue to grow the database, facilitate further speaker-organiser connections and ultimately to ensure that we never again hear the words ‘we regret that the conference organisers couldn’t find a suitable female speaker for the panel...’. Website: www.womenspeakersinhealthcare.co.uk Twitter: @womenspeakersHC References NHS Women on Boards by 2020. Exeter Business School, NHS Improvement and NHS Employers. Published 29 Mar 2017. Available at: https://www.nhsemployers.org/-/media/Employers/Publications/NHS-Women-on-Boards-report.pdf. Accessed 30 Mar 2019.