Why is it always women stuck at the back of the queue?

EARLIER l ast week I received a reminder that my cervical screen was due, and tweeted about it, expecting the usual reaction from those who do not like discussing things below the waist. The response I actually received was an email from a Hampshire resident about smear tests not being carried out ‘at the moment’.

So I was one of the lucky ones. My test is this week – which is also Cervical Cancer Prevention Week.

Others have not been so lucky, however, and it leads me to ask: is it because cervical cancer affects exclusively women that it’s been deemed acceptable not to carry out the tests ‘at the moment’?

Covid-19 and the vaccination programme are the number one priority, of course, and I take my hat off to all those brilliant medical staff and volunteers on the front line of the largest ever peacetime logistics operation. They are doing an incredible job and the number of people who have already been vaccinated is outstanding.

But do women’s medical issues have to get pushed to the back of the proverbial queue? Following my colleague Tracey Crouch’s brave decision to talk so publicly about her breast cancer diagnosis, and the exhortations to check our ‘bits and bobbins’ for signs of cancer, I felt real hope that predominantly female cancers were not going to be forgotten during the pandemic. But apparently my optimism was misplaced.

Prevention is, as we all know, better than cure, and early detection of abnormal cells is the best way to make sure treatment is prompt and lives are not lost unnecessarily.

I don’t know what ‘at the moment’ means, or how long it will take for services to be reinstated in all those surgeries that have cancelled them. I don’t know for women with currently undetected cervical cancer how long is too long. But I do know that take- up of screening was already too low, and in the pandemic it has dropped still further. So surely those women trying to make appointments should be able to access this vital service?

Last year, the Women and Equalities Select Committee, which I chair, started looking at the gendered economic impact of Covid, the impact on BAME people and the impact on access to services for people with disabilities. The reports we have published so far have been striking, those with protected characteristics have been hard hit by the pandemic in myriad ways.

Studies show women have carried the greatest share of home schooling, that there are real concerns about accessibility of childcare, that their careers have suffered. According to the Trades Union Congress, in this latest lockdown, 70 per cent of working mothers who asked to be furloughed for childcare reasons were refused.

Pregnant Then Screwed found in their survey that of women made redundant, 46 per cent said a lack of childcare played a role.

THE 2020 Mumsnet survey was i ncredibly stark, a near 80 per cent of mothers saying home schooling had fallen largely to them, impacting their ability to work. All of this has been echoed in the evidence the committee received in our inquiry.

We know women’s lives have been heavily impacted by Covid, but we must make sure their access to lifesaving screening is not, and work to ensure that ‘at the moment’ is kept to a bare minimum.