"Woman" has been removed by HSE on cervical screening material.

Is it too much to ask to also be included and not be disregarded in issues pertaining to women’s health?

We urge you to use our template to write to HSE about this.
#womanisnotadirtyword https://bit.ly/3laEI1w 

There are biological differences between men and women. This shouldn’t even be debated in 2020 but here we are. We are being shunned for simply acknowledging biological differences.

Why should we protest the alteration of language when it comes to healthcare? Because the male sex and the male body are used as a default for medicines.

Women’s healthcare issues are usually dismissed as hysteria which is why female-specific conditions such as endometriosis takes an average of 9 years to get diagnosed.

Wasn’t it only a few years ago when we had the CervicalCheck scandal with HSE? Dozens of women were given the wrong smear test results and they withheld this information for years. 20 women are now dead.

You’d think that the HSE would have learned that treating women as second-class citizens isn’t right. When we were told that change is under way, we were hoping that perhaps women won’t be treated as an after-thought but it seems that the word “woman” has been completely removed.

Woman is not a dirty word. Your version of inclusivity isn’t inclusive to those who don’t subscribe to gender identity ideology. Your version of inclusivity isn’t inclusive to girls and women whose first language isn’t English, mostly girls and women of colour.

Your version of inclusivity isn’t inclusive to girls and women who may be of a disadvantaged background, who wouldn’t have been educated to know the language well enough to identify that they have a cervix.

We need to have clear language and be able to talk about healthcare affecting women without gender identity politics. There are sex-specific issues that absolutely no one can identify out of. Sex bias in healthcare is real and we need to address that. Stop erasing women.