International Women's Day 2011

Grabbing my beautiful sister and her (at the time) tiny daughter for a hug - celebrating sisterhood.

Today marks the 100th annual International Woman's Day - which celebrates and recognises achievements that women have made economically, politically and socially.

As a woman, I'm grateful for the progression we have made over so many years. Each day in the clinic, I'm also reminded on how our needs vary from men. Whilst we strive for equality in the work place and a louder voice, physically and mentally we are very different. Both sexes are specifically unique. We have different requirements nutritionally, our hormones are different, our bodies work on different cycles and on the whole we generally require more emotional support. From a fertility perspective, we see the greatest variance as women carry and nurture offspring in the womb.

You may recall a post I placed up last week - I love how it demonstrated emotionally the beauty of sisterhood :: They teach it at Stanford.

"Women connect with each other differently and provide support

systems that help each other to deal with stress and difficult life
experiences. Physically this quality "girlfriend time" helps us to create
more serotonin - a neurotransmitter that helps combat depression and can
create a general feeling of well being. Women share feelings whereas men
often form relationships around activities. They rarely sit down with a
buddy and talk about how they feel about certain things or how their
personal lives are going. Jobs? Yes. Sports? Yes. Cars? Yes. Fishing,
hunting, golf? Yes. But their feelings? Rarely."

Celebrate your uniqueness this International Women's Day - and grab your sister, mother, friend and colleague for a hug.