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Together with Women in Football and Fulham FC, we ran our inaugural Women’s Health Summit for women working in football in April 2024. This event was the first of its kind and covered the key areas of concern for women’s health and well-being in the workplace.

The event was exciting for lots of reasons, including:

• Sharing our team’s knowledge! We spoke on nutrition, women’s health needs, the impact of stress on women, well-being in the workplace and healthy lifestyle practices for women.
• Driving the change that so desperately needs to happen for women to truly thrive in their workplaces. We’re proud to be part of this, one training event at a time!
• Taking our fantastic team of experts to those who needed support. Speakers included mental health and well-being expert Selina Clarke, stress expert Bernadette Dancy, nutritionist (and Elevate co-founder!) Ruth Tongue, and gynaecologist and obstetrician Dr Nadia Amokrane.
• Working with Fulham FC. They’re one of a cohort of clubs who recognise that the 51% need to be supported in every area of their lives to thrive in the workplace. And more importantly, to thrive in life!
• Collaborating with Women in Football – an incredible network of professionals working in the industry. They support and champion their peers, challenge discrimination, celebrate women’s achievements and ensure that women continue to be a vital part of the game.

With over 70 WIF members from across the UK we discussed all things health, and how we can start to reduce the health gender gap, not just in football but across all industries.

 

 

Let’s back up though: why is this important? First, the UK has the largest gender health gap in the G20. Despite living longer than men on average, women globally spend 25% more of their lives in poor health. According to the latest Women In Work global report by Deloitte:

• Half the women in this year’s survey were more stressed than last year, and two thirds of women don’t feel comfortable discussing mental health at work.
• Many women worked through severe pain from menstruation (40%), menopause (39%) or fertility challenges (almost 30%).
• Nearly 20% of women facing fertility challenges – including miscarriage, high-risk pregnancy or difficulty conceiving – reported that discussing these issues at work had negatively affected their career.
• Only 1 in 10 women feel they can talk openly in their workplace about work-life balance.
• 40% of women surveyed had been asked to return to the office either full- or part-time by their employers. This change had negative impacts on women’s well-being, work-life balance and productivity.
• 43% of women say they have experienced behaviours such as harassment or microaggressions at work in the past year.

A separate study found that 23% of women aged 40 to 60 had considered resigning because of the impact of menopause symptoms.

 

So what’s being done?

In 2022, the very first Women’s Health Strategy was published for England. It calls for:

• flexible working arrangements
• allowing women to discuss their health openly in the workplace
• better understanding of women’s health symptoms by managers and employers
• provisions and policies to support menstrual health and menopause in the workplace
• support for women undergoing fertility treatment or who have experienced a pregnancy loss
• support for unpaid carers (the majority of whom are women)

The data from the 2024 Deloitte survey and other research suggests that we have a long way to go to reach these goals. But it doesn’t need to be like this! The Deloitte survey found a small number of women who reported positive outcomes across the board.

For example, this cohort felt safe talking about their concerns at work and did not fear career impact or reprisals after open and honest communication. They felt supported to balance work responsibilities with other commitments, and were able to progress their careers in the ways they chose.

These women work for organisations that Deloitte calls the ‘Gender Equality Leaders’. More than 60% of women in these organisations plan to stay with their employer for more than three years, compared to 41% of the rest of the sample – and 92% want to progress to a senior leadership position within their organisation. Investing in organisation-wide strategies to improve women’s health at work benefits everyone: individual female employees, your business and society as a whole.

 

Our inaugural Women’s Health Summit

Knowing all this, we felt compelled to create our Women’s Health Summit content. Working alongside Women in Football and Fulham FC, we focused on:

• how stress affects women’s mental and physical health
• making your hormones work for you
• the role of nutrition in women’s health
• the importance of setting boundaries for maintaining optimal mental health

Kicking off the whole event was a panel discussion hosted by Lisa Pool from Women in Football and featuring WIF's CEO, Yvonne Harrison; Elevate co-founder Ruth Tongue; Elevate’s stress guru Bernadette Dancy; and Fulham FC’s Director of Safeguarding and Inclusion, Eleanor Rowland. We had so many takeaways from the panel, but the main ones were as follows.

First, let’s stop expecting women to be Superwoman. The idea of women ‘having it all’ is toxic – instead, put the focus on allowing each person to define their own idea of success.

Second, let’s educate men and women from a young age about women’s health. This needs to include everything, from periods to fertility, to peri and postmenopause. If you didn’t already learn about those things in your youth, it’s time to get curious and find out now! It’s not OK that we’re losing an estimated 900,000 women from the working population because of lack of support during their menopausal years. Organisations need to truly live and breathe their menopause policies.

The panel also highlighted that we should normalise talking about women’s health and break the stigma around it. We need to start conversations but, more importantly, learn how to listen compassionately and without judgement.

 

 

After the panel, our experts covered the key topics for women’s health at work. First up was a session with Elevate’s stress coach, Bernadette Dancy. She highlighted the mental and physical effects of stress on women and challenged us to become more intentional about our rest and recovery. Next, our consultant gynaecologist and obstetrician, Dr Nadia Amokrane, educated us on all things menstrual cycles, common hormonal conditions, perimenopause and menopause.

In the afternoon, our co-founder and nutritionist Ruth Tongue took us through key nutritional considerations at different stages of women’s lives. Finally, our mental health expert Selina Clarke led a lesson in compassion, self-care and boundaries.

Participants were inspired! The day was at capacity, with over 70 women attending from football organisations across the UK. We were thrilled to hear that they enjoyed the day at historic Craven Cottage. Most importantly, we were overwhelmed by the impact the event made on their approach to their own health and that of their female colleagues. Some of the comments included:

• "A terrific event with phenomenal speakers"
• "Really educational and met some brilliant women"
• "Thought-provoking and educational"
• "Impactful and insightful"

So here’s to more collaborations with Women in Football and Fulham FC – and here’s to making women’s health conversations in the workplace less taboo.

If you fancy updating your organisation’s approach to women’s health at work, get in touch with Elevate to find out more about our Women’s Health Summit training and our whole-organisation well-being audits.

Photography: Sportsbeat

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