Leaders from our hospitals Group share their messages for International Women’s Day 2025

Female NHS leaders at St George’s, Epsom and St Helier University Hospitals and Health Group (gesh) have shared their personal experiences and reflections to mark International Women’s Day.

Group CEO Jacqueline Totterdell, Group Chairman Gillian Norton, and Group Chief Nurse Arlene Wellman share a passion for highlighting the influence of female role models – and are among the 13,000-plus women working across gesh.

Here’s what they had to say…

Jacqueline Totterdell, Group Chief Executive

“As a woman in a senior position, I have experienced people who have lifted me up and supported me. Both men and women have been allies for me and with me, and helped me on my journey.

“And, of course, I've seen that not happen, either.

“It's really important to me that across our networks, across our allies, and across all of us, we support women to be the best they possibly can and encourage them to be brilliant.

“On my leadership journey, I actually have suffered quite a lot of impostor syndrome thinking that somebody would find me out because ‘I can't do this.’ ‘I'm in over my head.’ ‘I don't know how to do this.’

“I'd encourage you to work through that – because you can actually do that. You can apply for that job and you can get it, and you can be brilliant in everything you do.

“So, please: celebrate women. Please help us accelerate change to make sure that we are as brilliant as we can be.”

Gillian Norton, Chairman

“I'm the mother of two daughters and I tell them about how much progress has been made in my lifetime in relation to the role of women in society and in work. And they are often quite sceptical and talk to me about an ongoing patriarchal society.

“But I have to remind them, when I got married many, many years ago now, 40-odd years ago, I couldn't have the whole of my salary included in our mortgage application and that would be illegal now.

“So that represents progress, I suppose. And I tell my girls that story all the time.

“I'm really proud to be the first female chair of both hospitals and I'm very proud as well that we have a female chief executive.

“I think there's something very powerful about female leadership at the very top of the organisation and we are unusual, actually, to have two women leading the organisation as we do.

“To my dying day, I will advocate for women, encourage and support them to have confidence in themselves and to fulfil their potential.

“I'm going to finish on a quote from Ruth Ginsburg because I think this probably sums up what we're talking about: ‘Women belong in all places where decisions are being made.’”

Arlene Wellman, Group Chief Nurse

“I have been a nurse for many, many years now – more years that I care to say – but I think it is very clear for us as nurses, and we have experienced this for a long time, the inequities despite it being a really female-dominated profession.

“This year's theme for International Women's Day is ‘Accelerate Action’, and what that means to me is that we need to move from just awareness that women's rights are unequal in many aspects of society, to doing something about it.

“We need long-term solutions to the gender inequalities that we experience in the workplace and in other areas of our lives, and specifically for us in the NHS around closing the gender pay gap.

“And that is what this year's International Women's Day is about.

“Across gesh, we have many initiatives addressing some of the issues that women experience.

“We encourage all our colleagues get involved, do their bit, join the women's networks, and do their bit to support and accelerate the actions for improving inequity for women.”