Respect for women
September 8th every year is World Physiotherapy Day and it always sits in Women’s Health Week so the blog I write each year on this date gives me the opportunity to write about two things close to my heart. What it means to be a physiotherapist and what is important in Women’s Health Physiotherapy.
March 1977 proudly graduating as a physiotherapist with some buddies
After almost 50 years as a physiotherapist and 38 of them as a physio working in some capacity as a women’s health, I am reflecting on the state of the world with respect to women.
It is quite difficult to comprehend what is happening for women in 2026.
Violence and disrespect against girls and women is at an all time high. This has recently included a number of violent acts – one by a group of young teenage boys against a 13 year old girl; a 16 year old girl dying from suspected choking during sex with a boy; distribution of lists of girls in schools with comments that are too abhorent to be put in this blog; and AFL footballers doing a different sort of role playing to what should be expected when you are earning over $1 million.
And most horrifically, 49 women have been killed this year to 29th August. Violent deaths often perpetrated by men they knew.
It is hard to not fear for the safety of girls and women when this is what we wake up to and read about each morning.
Pelvic health physiotherapists need to understand the extent of this problem because we see the results of this violence and sexual assault in our clinics every day when women present (often many years after the event) with pelvic pain and other pelvic health issues.
An Australian Bureau of Statistics Report (2026) states that 1 in 5 women (22% or 2.2 million) since the age of 15 have experienced sexual violence from a male intimate partner, by a male friend or male housemate. These significant trauma events can cause changes to the brain for women (prefrontal cortex, amygdala and hippocampus) and cause stress-related dysregulation in their metabolic and immune systems, ultimately heightening their pain perception. Pelvic health physios help women to understand these links and teach women to navigate their symptoms and address all the drivers of any pain.
Why women deserve respect.
Every person on this earth started their life in a woman. Some were there as little as 26 weeks, others overstayed their welcome and went to 42 weeks, but every single person on this earth literally came from a woman. Take a moment to think about that.
The work I do each day so often relates to the moment in time that came next. Delivering the baby.
Women are changed forever on the day they deliver that baby – the day they delivered you. Some of that change is magnificent. Feeling a deep love for a small human, a love that they have never truly experienced before. Unless of course they aren’t feeling that love because they are so traumatised by what they just went through.
Their bodies are changed when carrying a baby and for some their body changed forever when delivering the baby. Pelvic floor muscles were torn, nerves tractioned and no longer working as they should, ligaments stretched or ruptured, organs falling out of their vagina, bones fractured… yes literally broken, pushing out the baby (coccyx, pubic bones). They have literally sacrificed their former self to give their child their time on earth.
Other women who delivered their child via an operation, but then immediately had to nurture the child, feed the child and soothe their cries – all with a tube still in their bladder, a drip in their arm pumping in pain relief and maybe a drain to remove blood and serous fluid.
Women are bloody incredible.
For this act alone you would think they would be revered*, loved, respected and placed on a pedestal. Or so you’d think.
But sadly in this crazy new world where we have limitless opportunities to better understand the science of life via the internet, there is a New World Order where a noisy few are spreading vileness through their microphones (it’s called The Manosphere), where journalism is leaning into sensationalism and click bait rather than truth, kindness, respect and love, and strangely increasing numbers of people (men and women) are believing whatever they read on social media without once adding the words ‘Scholarly articles’ into any search enquiry on Google to fact check.
When there is a loss of respect for women, there is a degradation of women’s rights in so many areas that have been so hard fought for over many years.
Reproductive rights, women’s health safeguards and general health care needs have been severely eroded in America particularly. In certain US states, women are literally dying because they are unable to receive appropriate medical care if they are pregnant because of reproductive rights restrictions.
Misinformation and disinformation regarding the value, the miracle and the science of vaccines is rampant. Diseases like whooping cough, measles and dyptheria amongst others are seeing an upsurge due to a campaign against vaccines that has proliferated on social media and has resulted in children and adults suffering with these once barely-seen illnesses.
Medical misogyny in healthcare and research has existed for centuries and it is only very recently that scientific research has started to include female mice and rats in experiments and women have been studied rather than extrapolation from male studies. This has often meant women’s symptoms have not been believed and appropriate assessment and treatment has taken years before being properly managed (eg. endometriosis has taken 7-10 years to be diagnosed).
How much of this lack of respect for women is tied up with a certain beligerance that is enabled when the leader of the so-called free world says whatever thought bubble pops into his head and has a dubious history with how he treats women? How much of this disrespect for women is fueled by social media and podcasting – which we know is actually a multimillion dollar industry for some angry male podcasters? Radicalising young male teenagers happens very quickly on social media (can be as little as 17 minutes after a male teenager sets up an account) and unhealthy beliefs about girls and women are created by the algorithm served up by big tech.
Me and three children (one in utero) circa 1991
I would hate to be parenting a teenager male or female in this day and age. We only had MSM to deal with in our day and we could threaten to cut the power cord. They were simpler days. But we need to applaud any attempts by individuals and governments to help the situation we find ourselves in. It is dire. Ask any girl or woman.
I commend the Press Club speech by Chanel Contos, CEO of Teach Us Consent to you and I am also sure there are many parents who have 10-13 year olds who are very grateful the government has social media bans in place for under 16 year olds who can say: It’s against the law to set up these accounts.
To finish on a better note this is a wonderful address delivered by Michael Blake, the headmaster of all-boys school St Joseph’s College, Hunters Hill, NSW to his students last week. He spoke up for women. It is abridged for this blog, but these are his words:
Thank you for writing and sharing such a meaningful reflection. As a pelvic health physical therapist with a Korean background, now caring for women here in Brooklyn, New York, your words deeply resonated with me—both personally and professionally. I’m grateful for your voice and for this important reminder of why our work matters.
Thank you Joy I appreciate your comments. Our work matters for sure and it takes dedicated pelvic health physios to keep hearing some of the dreadful stories we do hear particularly from women in pain or women who have suffered significant birth trauma and keep showing up to work because it can be draining. Sue x