Women make up nearly half the workforce, yet many companies still have a ways to go when providing health benefits that meet our needs. Frankly, female health education as a whole is still lacking. How are we expected to advocate for ourselves if we don’t fully understand our bodies?
Dr. Faina Gelman-Nisanov is a licensed physician at North Jersey Gynecology LLC who aims to provide the best primary care to women and their families. Recognizing the need for better awareness around our well-being, she makes it her mission to empower others with the knowledge they need to navigate the ever-complex healthcare system.
Here, Dr. Gelman-Nisanov shares the importance of women’s health awareness, and how businesses can best support their female employees.
A new trend is simply having more access to information. I have a lot of women coming to my office asking me about something they saw on TikTok. I think it’s great that people share stories about what’s going on, but we have to take everything with a grain of salt because you are different from me, and I’m different from the woman next door. Our personal reactions to medications or certain situations will always vary.
I would say hormone replacement therapy is also seeing a big shift, as it was looked down upon a couple of years ago. New research data reveals that it’s probably beneficial for women in perimenopause, and we’re doing harm by not offering it as a solution. Everyone used to say, “Oh, definitely not. Don’t put me on hormones.” five to 10 years ago. Now, they’re more open to hormone replacement therapy, and some are asking for it specifically.
The last trend I’m noticing as a doctor is the interest around supplements. There are so many out there, and nobody knows what’s good for them, or what’s working. I’ve been doing a lot of research, because everyone’s coming in and asking about them.
As a doctor, I love that everything is at my fingertips. I’ve always used a computer in my career, and technological advances have helped me get answers. Let’s say my patient takes medication because they’re bipolar or schizophrenic. I would need to prescribe something safe. In our current digital age, I can look everything up.
When it comes to health tech, I always caution women. In this environment, you want to be mindful of how much you put your information on your phone, on any app, because that information may be used against you. Women may track their ovulation or menstrual cycle. This is beneficial if you’re trying to conceive. But if you have no plans to do so, consider where that data is going.
First and foremost, businesses need to provide better sick day policies. If a person needs to go to the doctors, people need to have that time off. A lot of doctors are open nine to five, including me. It’s a common concept, so companies should be open to that flexibility.
Secondly, women can have severe reactions to their periods that are completely debilitating. Some can’t leave the house. Employers need to be aware of this reality, and that it’s a woman’s choice whether she takes birth control or hormones. Sometimes, these options still don’t eliminate issues.
Work from home and effective leave policies should be more readily available. Women should be able to come back when they’re done, because not everybody wants to stay at home with the baby. We want to go back to work; we enjoy it. If women need disability leave, the process should be smoother than a paper packet. It’s so archaic—because we have computers!
Finally, provide people with the appropriate time-off. It may be very anti-corporate and anti-capitalist, but we need to rest and recover. We need to be more understanding.
Many women don’t just go to work. We also clean the house, cook, do the laundry, shop for groceries, and pay the bills. We need to change the baseline so women can pursue their careers. We need to create a stamp for ourselves so we can’t be edged out of the workplace. If we take leave due to a medical condition, the job should still be waiting for us. Someone can take over temporarily; the company can hire a temp. Everyone can do a little bit more work for a couple of weeks or months, just until the woman comes back to work. We need to assert ourselves as staples in the workplace.
Then, I think about women’s rights. It all starts with education, and education begins in childhood. This is a woman. Here’s how her body may be different from a man. She has a different set of internal organs, and she can have different needs in her life. That doesn’t make her less effective—in fact, it makes her more effective at everything.
CCWomen is a community platform for women and allies. Our mission is twofold: create a network that maximizes collective empowerment, and give the mic to undervalued people to share their experiences. In doing so, we strive to revolutionize the business world, making it more equitable for women.
Have a story you want to share? We’d love to get in touch.