Jacqueline Healy, Women's Health and Human Rights Worker, National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI)

Jacqueline's work with the NWCI will focus on the advancing a women’s health agenda and supporting the roll out of a gender mainstreaming project with the Health Service Executive, making the planning and delivery of services more responsive to women and men’s health needs.  She also supports the development of the Women’s Human Rights Alliance (WHRA) to promote women’s human rights and monitor the implementation of international commitments as they relate to women. The WHRA is currently preparing a shadow report on the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights around Article 12 the Right to Health.

My health is determined by a range of factors, the social determinants of health. Gender is widely recognised as a key social determinant of health. The factors that determine health and illhealth such as poverty and low incomes, employment, education, living and working conditions are not the same for women and men.

My Healthcare is good in comparison to the many women in Ireland who have reported to the National Women’s Council of Ireland the hugely negative impact that poverty, isolation, the burden of care work, low levels of participation in public life and domestic violence have on their mental health and wellbeing. Gender inequality has a visible impact on women’s access to and experience of healthcare.  

My healthcare fear is for my family or friends to get chronically ill in such an unequal exclusionary and gender blind healthcare system, a system which lacks strategic direction and is clearly not equipped to deal with the needs of the most vulnerable in our society including women and children.

Ireland’s healthcare is unequal and gender blind. The two tier system must be abolished and replaced by a system governed by need and not ability to pay. Integrating gender into policy, planning and service delivery is part of Ireland’s national and international commitments to providing equality of access to services for both women and men.

My healthcare dream for Ireland is a universal high quality healthcare system for all people that is created through a right to health approach, governed by need and not ability to pay and a public health policy that truly integrates a gender perspective with proper resource allocation for its implementation.

I, Jacqueline Healy have signed the Healthcare Guaranteed petition and have asked the government to provide a legal guarantee of equal access to healthcare in Ireland. You should too.

 

You can sign the Healthcare Guaranteed petition online, now.