Blog Layout

Freedom to choose

29 June 2022
What was your reaction?

I was appalled at the US Supreme Court’s decision last week to overturn Roe v Wade, thereby ending federal protection of the legal right to abortion for American women. Why should I care so much? I’m not a US citizen or resident, my childbearing years are behind me and I’m fortunate that here in the UK we have well-established legal freedoms ensuring women’s right to choose whether to continue with or terminate a pregnancy. Well, I care for two reasons, one societal, the other personal - more on those shortly. Whether they are facing an unplanned pregnancy or the opposite scenario of trying and failing to get pregnant, whatever their circumstance and whatever their wishes, when it comes to reproductive health women need 4 things to help them decide on the right course of action.

Let's consider first the societal impact of the Supreme Court’s ruling. It hasn’t ‘just’ ripped up the legal right to abortion, it has dramatically unwound years of painfully slow, hard-won progress towards gender equality and equal rights. Women will be forced down paths not of their choosing, denied access to the healthcare they need and criminalised for thinking deeply about whether they are able to bring a baby safely into the world, love it, care for it and provide for it – possibly with minimal support - for the next 18 years and beyond.  And that’s not even taking into account any distressing or traumatic circumstances under which they may have conceived or what the baby’s or mother’s life prospects will be if either are facing serious health issues. Abortions will not cease, they will simply go underground and become unsafe, further jeopardising the mother’s health. Many teenage girls and young women may, as a result of this ruling, stop their education early due to state-enforced motherhood and as a result watch their life choices, job prospects and earnings potential dwindle and never recover. As a a mother and stepmother of two girls, I fear for the futures of all young Americans coming into womanhood.  Travelling out of state to access medical advice and interventions will require sufficient funds and time off work and therefore won’t be available to all; this ruling will disproportionately impact those on low incomes and in precarious employment or unemployment and will deepen social and racial inequalities still further.

Secondly, the personal reasons behind my reaction. As a woman and as a mother who tries hard to instil independence, a sense of agency and resilience in my own young daughter and to teach her to make her own choices in life, it makes me viscerally angry to see this most basic of right – to make our own healthcare decisions, to decide what does and doesn’t happen to our own bodies – taken away from other girls and women. It sends a chilling signal, reminiscent of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, that a woman’s role and place in society is first and foremost as a bearer of children; that her own wishes, hopes, ambitions, value and identity come a poor second, if acknowledged at all.

Whilst I count my blessings never to have been in the position of needing to consider a termination, I have needed access to expert advice and medical help for the polar opposite situation: trying to get pregnant. After 3 years of trying for a baby in my mid/late 30’s (not postponed as a ‘lifestyle choice’ in order to focus on my career, simply because I had only just met someone with whom I wanted to bring a baby into this world), we were refused access to NHS fertility treament because my husband has two children from his first marriage. Many investigations, countless injections, one private, failed round of IVF and several thousand pounds later, we were given the diagnosis of ‘unexplained infertility’ and told we’d never have our own child.  But we had still had options and the freedom to make our own decisions and yes, being able to pay for this advice and treatment privately (with all the financial sacrifices that entailed) helped keep some options on the table. We were advised to consider surrogacy or adoption; we were also free to decide, against the experts’ advice, to try one more round of IVF that was ‘bound to fail’ but which, against the odds, miraculously worked. I am eternally grateful for those choices and freedoms, for the support every step of the way from our doctors, families, friends and the few colleagues at work who knew what we were going through.

Going through that experience left me wanting to help others facing difficult journeys to parenthood. So now I speak publicly (FT, £) about my past infertility and try to help break down the taboo at work about this topic. I’m on the Steering Committee of the Workplace Fertility Community that runs free monthly webinars and hosts a Linked In group offering advice, resources and examples for employers. And I work with organisations to help them develop fertility policies and put in place practical, valued support for any employees needing help with their reproductive health.

Trying to conceive and bear a child is clearly a very different situation to trying to decide what to do about an unplanned, unsafe or unwanted pregnancy; I’m not arguing they are one and the same. But whichever situation women – and their partners – find themselves in, they need the same things:

1.    Timely access to unbiased, accurate medical information and advice to help them understand what their options are and what the right choice is for them: whether to proceed or not and what the risks and consequences will be, physically, emotionally, financially.
2.    Non-judgmental support from people around them as they make those decisions and who help them, in time, come to terms with the outcomes and to move forward in life.
3.    Practical, financial and emotional assistance such as being able to attend appointments and take time off work without fear of reprisal, being demoted, seeing their pay or prospects stagnate or losing their job; access to loans, vouchers and other means of funding to cover travel and medical expenses; knowing their employer cares about them as more than just a number.
4.    To be listened to and to be heard. To be asked ‘what is important to you in all of this?’, ‘what do you need right now to get through this?' and ‘how can I/we help you?’. Not to be ignored, told they are wrong or told how they should feel or what they should do.

Sometimes people find themselves facing the hardest decisions imaginable, in life-changing situations they didn’t plan or choose to be in, or they can see the life path ahead that they want to make happen but they can’t do it on their own.  As a society, as employers, as colleagues and as friends, we all have a role to play in helping them to make the choices that are right for them. Not to sit in judgment, label their wishes as ‘wrong’, decide for them, punish them for their decisions or take their freedom away.

It is heartening to see a number of large US employers quickly announce their policies to support employees needing access to out-of-state medical advice and expertise for terminations or unspecified ‘medical interventions’, including providing financial assistance. If you're at a UK-based organisation and thinking this issue doesn't feel relevant to you right now – think again. Your employees today still need to understand and manage their own reproductive health just as they need to manage other, more spoken-about aspects of their wellbeing. And some of them may be wrestling right now with a difficult reproductive health decision, unbeknown to you or other colleagues.

So stand up, speak up and let them know you are there for them and ready to listen.



Enjoyed reading this? Share it with others

Recent blogs

22 November 2024
Growing successfully as a business means first letting go of old ways of operating; only then can people fully embrace the new.
16 October 2024
Teams are what make or break business performance. With a relatively small investment in each team, your retention rates, employee engagement scores, and productivity measures will go up.
5 September 2024
How to encourage this in a way that works for your business. There is a real and urgent need to address the creeping norm of employees working all hours, being contactable and available all the time. But Labour’s recent abandoning of a legal ‘right to disconnect’ in favour of a voluntary code of practice is probably the right move, in my humble opinion. Here are 5 reasons why, 5 ways to make switching off a win/win for you and your organisation, and 5 positive actions to put into practice now. Why legislation is too blunt a tool: Heavy-handed legislation will probably antagonise businesses, not secure their support. There's more to do first to spotlight organisations that are managing the boundaries well between working & non-working time well and proving the business benefits. It’s too early to say confidently how well similar legislation has worked abroad. Australia only adopted this last month; the longer-standing fine-based approach in France and Portugal isn't proven as an effective deterrent. Human-centred organisations are probably already paying attention to this, being creative about work boundaries and using their approach to enhance their employer brand. They'll be the ones who proactively adopt the code of practice and make it genuinely part of ‘the way we work here’ - and they'll win at attracting and retaining talented people longer-term as a result. ‘But clients will go elsewhere’. This is the defence I often hear in rejection of proposals like the right to disconnect. No, client won't IF you engage them in the change and show them that it means they get to access your sharpest minds working at their best,. When organisations see their early-adopter competitors living the code and still winning & keeping desirable clients - and nabbing theirs - they’ll swiftly follow suit. Let’s be clear: some people will continue to say yes to high pay/exciting work in return for ‘you’ll work whenever when we need you ‘. But it’ll be a transactional relationship lasting for as long as it benefits the individual (or employer) and no longer. Easy come, easy go. If that’s your philosophy as an employer: own it and be transparent. Don’t sign the code and pay it lip service. If yours IS an organisation that wants to do better at encouraging employees to switch off, try: 1. Using Labour’s shift to open up conversations at work about pressures to communicate or be available after hours. 2. Adding ‘we support the right to disconnect’ in your recruitment material and having examples to share with candidates during interviews. 3. Supporting selected managers and their teams to trial different experiments around switching off. 4. Asking people ‘how can we help you do to your best work within your normal working hours?’. ‘What gets in the way of this?’. 5. Setting up an industry-wide collaboration to trial different ways of achieving the same outcome. Asynchronous and flexible working are here to stay and bring many benefits to individuals and their employers. But they can make it a challenge to co-ordinate and communicate within teams and across time zones. Here's what you can do personally to uphold the right to switch off and respect other people's non-working time: Add an email footer like: 'I'm sending this now because it suits me but I'm not expecting a response outside of normal working hours'. Work offline if you're working late evenings or weekends, so you're not visible on Teams/whatever channels you use, and schedule your emails to send the next day to avoid the ripple effect of people responding immediately. If people on your team have repeatedly worked late or sacrificed home lives to help reach a deadline, then give them some time back straight afterwards. It's simple and effective. If you're a manager, find out people's preferences around being contacted - or not - during out of hours or when on leave. Everyone's different, so make it your job to know. See annual leave as an opportunity for a colleague to step up and have some stretch experience by covering for you, with support beforehand. Then switch off properly and don't muddy the water by dipping in and out unasked. Listen to my podcast conversation with Ben Higgins, Global CHRO of Wholesale Banking at Societe Generale, about how he does this. These examples are about applying #timeintelligence. If you want to know more about my #timeintelligence sessions for leaders, teams and individuals, get in touch . And if you're making good progress in your organisation on switching off - or at least trialling a few changes - then I'd love to hear more. During normal working hours, of course.
View from a hill top of a promontory surrounded on both sides by open water.
16 July 2024
Managing the school holiday juggle and announcing book 2!
Image of a lit beacon at dusk with a view across green countryside.
13 June 2024
What does it cost us to be always rushing ahead? What are we missing by not pausing to look back?
17 May 2024
When sticking stops. A barn owl perched observantly on a post in front of me, a heron gliding by like a feathered Concorde with its wings tucked in. Just two of the birds I’ve spotted today whilst working at UK’s only family-owned and managed National Nature Reserve, at Elmley in Kent. I’m not working in the sense of checking on wildlife and mending fences, I’m working in the sense of enjoying an indulgent writing retreat in glorious isolation, tucked away in a definitely-not-roughing-it wooden cabin complete with outdoor tub overlooking meadows and marshes (more pics here ). This retreat is both a long-anticipated birthday gift from my family and the official starting point for writing my second business book. It’s been brewing in my head for months and is now begging loudly to be given some proper love and attention. So here I am, off-grid in every sense with nowhere else to go and nothing else to do for 24 hours than plan and write. Write what? I hear you ask…
Photo taken from a plane of white fluffy clouds below and a deep blue sky.
19 April 2024
What does time off mean to you? How well do you 'not work'?
8 March 2024
I waved a Minion off to school yesterday for World Book Day. At least my 12 year old daughter now sorts out her own WBD outfit thank goodness, and there’s now another 364 days before WBD rolls around again. But we’re not done for this week because it's International Women’s Day today! In recognition of this global celebration of women’s contribution to work and society, every day this week I’ve been sharing a statistic on Linked In that describes how women are impacted by our 'time culture' at work. If ‘time culture’ is a new expression to you a) you obviously haven’t read my award-winning business book The Future of Time yet and b) it means our attitudes, behaviours and expectations around the way we spend our time at work. What gets valued and rewarded, what doesn’t. What we spend much of our time on, what we don’t spend so much time on (but ought to). Because surprise, surprise, women are disadvantaged by our ‘time culture’ in several ways. Here are my top five.
21 February 2024
Making change stick. Recently, I’ve been tuning in regularly to the 'Just One Thing' podcast by Dr. Michael Mosley. In each 15-minute episode, Michael delves into a single, manageable change that can enhance our health and extend our lifespan. Thanks to him, I’m keeping up my green tea ritual (that was a quick win), incorporating daily planks into my exercise routine (right after my morning run - oof) and reheating leftover carbs. I’m a bit of a podcast butterfly and I’m wondering why this podcast has stuck firmly now as a favourite. Besides Dr. Mosley's warm and reassuring tone, I think it boils down to 3 things. Firstly, focusing on just one thing feels refreshingly attainable. Let's face it, we're bombarded with complex self-improvement strategies daily. Who wants a whole industry of new ‘to do’s to implement, remember and track? Secondly, the changes are entirely within my control. I don't need anyone's permission to start planking in my bedroom, even if it does provide my husband with daily amusement. I can make these changes tomorrow, better still, today. Thirdly, the advice is specific and the outcomes are clear. I know precisely what to do and whether it’s working. Whether it's keeping my blood pressure in check or reducing blood sugar spikes, the benefits are measurable. Now, shifting gears to my work life, I find parallels between Dr. Moseley's approach and my Time-Intelligent Teams workshops. These workshops aim to enhance teams' productivity and enjoyment at work – to help people to invest their time more effectively. We focus on one collective and one individual change that are within the team's control. Through reflection, brainstorming, and laughter, teams identify actionable steps to work smarter, not harder. The feedback from these workshops has been resoundingly positive with managers reporting improved communication, higher levels of commitment to the change and more cohesive teamwork. Of course the power of ‘just one thing’ is that once you’ve mastered that one change and it has proven it’s value, it simply becomes part of how you do things. Which leaves you free to cast around for the next ‘just one thing’ that could also have a transformative effect. And another after that. That’s why, to my amazement, wall squats have joined my daily exercise routine and I’m evangelising about the benefits of cooked tomatoes. I just need to find Michael’s episode on why sticky toffee pudding will reverse the ageing process…..
Show More
Share by: