Last year ACS International Schools, a group of schools with campuses in the UK and Doha, Qatar, set out on a journey to ensure that its working conditions provide true equality for all staff.

As someone who’s passionate about driving gender equality, I volunteered to lead our gender equality network.

We decided to start by creating a women’s health policy that would offer more support to female staff who suffer from conditions such as the menopause, endometriosis or polycystic ovary syndrome.

It took around three months to develop the policy as we gathered input from teachers, HR and the senior leadership team to ensure that it was a truly collaborative document - and it finally went live in September. So, what does it include?

A key principle in the women’s health policy is that managers are responsible for making sure that no one experiences less favourable treatment as a result of women’s health conditions, and the policy ensures they are held accountable for this.

To support them, managers have been offered women’s health training; for example, Talking Menopause recently ran a session on the menopause for all staff, including line managers, which was incredibly helpful.

Flexible working

A second strand of the policy is to recognise the role that flexible working can play in helping women suffering from conditions by allowing them to change working hours, work from home when required, take more frequent breaks or work fewer hours.

Advice on how employees and managers can approach conversations around flexible working was another topic covered in our menopause training.

As well as outlining responsibilities for line managers, the policy provides guidance for employees, encouraging them to seek medical advice, be open about symptoms and contact our employee assistance programme counselling service if they need it.

All conversations are strictly confidential when requested by the employee. If they have a male line manager but feel more comfortable speaking with a woman, they know that they can always reach out to a female member of the HR team or a trusted colleague.

Although it’s still early days, so far the greater encouragement to be open about health symptoms provided by the policy has been well received by staff. We continually gather feedback from our community on where we can go next.

Of course, we recognise that men, too, have areas of their health that impact on their experience in the workplace, and addressing this is an important next step for us.

We have already run a webinar focusing specifically on men’s health conditions and we’re now working on a men’s health policy to launch next month, covering issues such as prostate cancer and fertility treatment.

There is still work to be done; a policy isn’t going to erase employees’ struggles with their health overnight. But by talking about these issues and outlining clear steps and flexible solutions, schools can make significant improvements for their staff.

The journey will be ongoing, but one thing’s for certain: gender equality in schools is not an unachievable goal.

Rebecca Bainbridge is head of brand and gender equality network lead at ACS International Schools

This article originally appeared in the 19 November 2021 issue under the headline “How schools can support women’s health”