PARTTWO:MINDTHE(GENDERHEALTH)GAP

Alexepshtein

Women are not aware of their existence, let alone know to check for symptoms. This dangerous problem does not even have sufficient solutions. Though there have been multiple campaigns to promote women’s empowerment, to try to speak up on these subjects and conditions, the gender health gap still remains. So what’s the problem?

Part of Hertility’s campaign to expose this health gap is a series of eyecatching adverts in the busiest areas of London, some posters of which caught my eye that day on the tube.

This series of advertisements are designed to normalize and open conversations regarding intimate aspects of peoples’ lives. These adverts are in busy public spaces in central London, exhibiting neutral tones and sometimes naming female anatomy, but they are not overtly gendered. What Hertility is focusing on is creating a new discourse surrounding women’s healthcare, with people who aren’t just women. In other words, shifting individual empowerment and onus away from the woman, where she has to ‘grow the courage’ to learn about her own body and make way for herself in the medical field, to sharing it with their male counterparts, to achieve more social change.

Seeing the terms ‘cervix’, ‘ovary’, ‘hormonal’, terms that are either taboo or have negative connotations in light hearted banners in a public environment encourages such open dialogue. It begins to breakdown stigmatized barriers that prevent women from seeking or receiving adequate reproductive or sexual healthcare. Hopefully, in the coming years, we’ll also be able to see fewer ‘baby on board!’ badges and more ‘foetus in uterus!’, because like the previous terms, these should not be taboo either, and neither should a woman’s reproductive organs.