North East women share their experiences of inequalities in powerful poems for International Women's Day

Posted by Claire Smiles, Fuse PhD student from Newcastle University and experts by experience Marie Warby and Kayleigh Cookson

Presenters and experts by experience at the Fuse event on International Women's Day 

On International Women’s Day 2023 we at Fuse celebrated by showcasing the lived experiences of women in the North East. This event brought together experts by experience, researchers and practitioners who engaged with presentations, shared experiences and devised top priorities to tackle women’s health inequalities. 

I presented the early findings from the ‘Women’s Sexual Wellbeing’ study alongside wonderful women with lived experience. During my presentation Marie and Kayleigh shared powerful poetry they had written for our IWD Fuse event. Their poetry about womanhood and motherhood reflected on personal experiences and demonstrated the challenges and the resilience of women. A big thank you to Marie and Kayleigh for agreeing to share their poems in this blog post and to Kirsty for taking the videos below.

Catch up with all the discussion on Twitter using #FuseRE and International Women's Day using #IWD2023 and #EmbracingEquity. For more information about the event visit the Fuse website.

** Content/trigger warning: adult language and references to abuse and suicide **

Womanhood by Marie Warby

The road to womanhood wasn’t so kind to me. 

I look at infancy and I see abuse; I look at puberty and I see a noose. 

A very painful past as I recall, I didn’t allow it to stop me, I refuse to fall. 

I felt like an adolescent, stuck in a woman’s body, 

Screaming out hoping someone would hear, my body always stuck in a constant state of fear 

Very submissive that’s what I’d become, all I needed was a way to find home. 

Without a map nor a tool, just a woman to teach me from her school, 

A wealth of knowledge to show me the way, I know ill be powerful and independent one day. 

My inner child is reaching out and ready to kneel, this little girl needs to heal. 

With a blank sheet of paper where do I start, it's time to mend my broken heart. 

I look at my past with no regret, for every challenge of womanhood I’ve met. 

To say it’s been easy that would be wrong, and here I stand singing my song. 

Shining a light for others to see, some days I can’t believe it's me. 

Womanhood is such a beautiful place to be, and now finally I can nurture Marie.

Needs to be everything by Kayleigh Cookson

 

The expectations of a mother is not easy,
I need superpowers and multi-tasking skills.
I have to be a role model and provide a clean tidy house,
I have to budget and pay all the bills.

I need to be very organised,
Always plan ahead every time I go shopping.
I have to be a cook, a baker, I'm never out the kitchen,
And I am a professional at washing.

I need to be brilliant at cleaning,
Wash the dishes, hoover up, pick up mess.
I have to negotiate and play referee,
My patience constantly at test.

I need to be very responsible,
Be a doctor, nurse, councillor, therapist.
I have to be handy at odd jobs round the house,
There's no problem that I cannot fix.

I need to be an expert encyclopaedia,
To answer all the why's, how's, what's, where's and when.
I have to be fun and play lots of games,
Again and again and again.

I need to be a smart tutor,
Help with homework, teach right from wrong.
I have to be a PA, hairdresser, taxi driver,
And always put things back where they belong.

I need to make lots of dreams come true,
I am Santa, the tooth fairy, Easter bunny.
I have to cure boredom on cold and wet rainy days,
Go out and make memories when it is sunny.

I need to be rich with empathy,
Be supportive, wipe away lots of tears.
I have to be a hero and never be scared,
And chase away all the nightmares and fears.

I need to be a care giver,
A good communicator and be able to detect lies.
I have to be an agony aunt and a shoulder to lean on,
I've got to know how to save lives.

I need to be an active listener,
Good at advice and have psychic abilities.
I have to be ready and always prepared,
To provide mental and emotional stability.

I need to be loving and caring,
Tend to wounds, scars, bumps, patch up scrapes.
I have to be a healer and always the best one,
To pick up pieces every time a heart breaks.

I need to be strong, be a survivor,
Put on a brave face no matter the weather.
I have to paint on a smile, show no pain, head up high,
Always cope, always hold it all together.

I need to always have time,
There's no relax, no switch off, no escape.
I have to put everyone's needs above my own,
Oh the guilt if I make a mistake.

I need to never be ill,
Cope with bleeding monthly and raging hormones.
I have to put up with mood swings, hot flushes and cramps,
Then not to mention the menopause.

I need to be forever perfect,
Can't shout or swear coz I'll face stigma and shame.
I have to never go out coz I'll be a bad mam and a slag,
Not worthy, always judged, the one to blame.

The expectations of a mother is not easy,
I need to also then be a friend, a partner, a wife.
I have to be a daughter, a sister, an aunty, a nana,
I am never just me, a woman living my life.

Dressing as a tomato and meeting the CMO - all in a day's science

Elsie Widdowson, British nutritionist

Posted by Amelia Lake, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at Teesside University and Associate Director of Fuse

In this blog on International Women's Day, Amelia tells us about the pioneering female scientist who inspired her career in nutrition science.

When I was at University studying for my degree in Human Nutrition and Dietetics in the mid 1990s our ‘food tables’ were in books – actual books that you held.

We worked out nutritional content of food using books and calculators. Now-a-days this is all done by software without the need for the hard copy of the books. The book we all had was a copy of the ‘McCance and Widdowson’ Food Tables. I still have my well thumbed copy and the book is the the basis of the modern software systems that nutritionists and food scientists use.

Although as an undergraduate I didn’t really give the names McCance and Widdowson much thought it was later on in my career, thanks to the British Nutrition Foundation and my colleagues, that I really learned about Elsie Widdowson. She was born in 1906 and died in 2000 having spent a long and productive life as a pioneering female scientist. Along with her colleague Robert McCance, Elsie Widdowson was at the forefront of the Nutrition effort after World War II.

Elsie studied Chemistry at Imperial Collage London and in 1931 completed a PhD in Chemistry also at Imperial. Elsie met Robert McCance in the kitchens at Kings College Hospital in 1933, when she was studying to become a dietitian and he a junior doctor. Here, in the hospital kitchens, began a partnership that would last for 60 years!

It was at Cambridge, where they both worked, that the book I mentioned earlier was developed: a publication pivotal to nutritional science. But it wasn’t just for the development of this book that she has my respect - it was for the pioneering work around vitamin and mineral fortification, the rehabilitation of severely starved individuals and malnourishment around the world and important work on infant diets. This was an incredible female scientist who paved the way for nutrition scientists like me.

 

                           My inaugural Professorial lecture - challenging the food environment

I recently spoke about today’s nutrition challenges in my inaugural Professorial lecture. Preparing for this lecture I had to reflect on the work I have been doing in the field of nutrition research starting from 1998, looking at ‘the influence of Western Food on a Traditional Diet’ in Western Sumatra Indonesia for my first degree, through to my PhD studies on longitudinal dietary change and then finding my field around Obesogenic Environments and Food Environments. Similar to the ever changing Food Environment, which I study, the field of nutrition science is ever changing - in line with our changing diets and behaviours. There remain many challenges not least around food insecurity which, according to a new report by the Food Foundation, continues to increase. The current cost of living crisis puts food and eating into the spotlight. 

One of the challenges of Nutrition Research is around communicating. Doing this clearly around the noise of misinformation about food or food products is a challenging job! Throughout the twenty-three years that I have worked in nutrition, I have spent a significant amount of time communicating. Sometimes, that involves dressing as a tomato for a public lecture to children (see picture) and sometimes that involves meeting the chair of The House of Commons Science and Technology Committee (Sir Norman Lamb) or even the Chief Medical Officer (Professor Chris Whitty). But most of the time it is about exchanging knowledge between professionals and communicating to the public about the ‘latest’ nutrition fad or ‘superfood’ (spoiler - there is no such thing as a superfood).

Dialogue is important, food is important and nutrition science has much to do. I think I am going to be kept busy in my line of work for a few more years!

The other issue I reflected on during my inaugural lecture was my career breaks (3 in total) and the fact that I have worked part time (3-days per week) since having my second son Auden in 2012. My eldest son David died from a rare disease called Alveolar Capillary Dysplasia in 2011 and, along with my husband we run a charity called The David Ashwell Foundation raising money for research into this usually fatal lung condition affecting newborns. In 2020 I was recognised by TimeWise as a Power Part-Timer. Since doing my lecture, I have received a number of emails thanking me for talking about working part-time and for acknowledging the army of helpers it requires to be a working parent.

If you want to help make a difference in people’s lives I can recommend a career in nutrition science….

#InternationalWomensDay #IWD2022 #BreakTheBias