Louise Oriti, Executive Director, Royal Brisbane and Women’s Hospital

Today, Wednesday 8 March 2023 is International Women’s Day. It is a day where we celebrate the achievements of women in our workforce, raise awareness about discrimination and take action to drive gender parity.

At RBWH, we are proud to have many strong, capable women leading teams across all professions and service lines. The perspective, leadership qualities and innovative thinking demonstrated by these leaders is an asset to our organisation.

The theme for International Women’s Day this year is ‘Cracking the Code: Innovation for a gender equal future’. This theme is based on the United Nations 67th Commission on the Status of Women priority theme ‘Innovation and technological change, and education in the digital age for achieving gender equality and the empowerment of all women and girls’. 

In line with this year’s theme, I encourage you all to assess how you can use innovation and technology in your teams to promote gender equality. This may mean creating more part time roles to allow for carer responsibilities, utilising technology for flexible work arrangements and taking advantage of programs such as Metro North Health’s Level Up initiative and mentoring program for junior medical staff. We have come a long way to gender equality in the past 100 years, however we still have a long way to go.

In the words of one of our senior female medical staff members, it is essentially that we create a health service which reflects the community we care for. By supporting and celebrating women in health and fostering equality in our workforce, we are committing to providing the best possible care for our patients.

Please join me in thanking every woman who makes up part of the RBWH team.

Kind regards,

Louise.