Last year InterSurgeon was delighted to welcome member, Gender Equity in Global Surgery (GEIGS), to our growing member network. Set up in 2019, fellows at Harvard Medical School, USA, in the Program of Global Surgery and Social Change sought to put gender equity on the global surgery agenda after The Lancet Commission on Global Surgery (2015) put SOTA care on the international agenda emphasising a need to double the global surgical workforce by 2030. GEIGS provides an insight into the problem; “it is now time to tap into the resource of underrepresented genders in surgery worldwide: cisgender women and individuals in the transgender umbrella including binary trans men and women, and other gender web identities outside the gender binary including non-binary, agender, genderfluid and genderqueer. Although women have made great strides in gender parity in medicine, much work remains to be done in the field of surgery.”1
About GEIGS
Hannah Paraquett, secretary of GEIGS, described more about the organisation: “GEIGS was founded on 3 pillars: Research, Mentorship and Advocacy. And we work through this foundation trying to deliver and improve gender equity worldwide.” Each pillar has its own spotlight and expands to meet membership needs, for example; now GEIGS has established teams for Education and DEJ. The GEIGS Mentorship Program works globally connecting our regional groups; “We now have groups in the many WHO regions. We have our Afro group, North America, Latin America, Searo and Europe , and we are trying to build a network for mentorship and better surgical access to care.” All the GEIGS work is brought together by the global main steering committee, which is elected annually.
GEIGS and InterSurgeon
Last year, GEIGS and InterSurgeon started working together officially to promote gender equity. Jill Mayunga, GEIGS Co-Chair, says: “I was looking at InterSurgeon as the first place where we can establish a proper community of global surgery organizations. It’s really like the best platform, in my opinion, for global surgery organizations to come together and see what we can do.” Hannah added; “Collaboration is key to improving gender equity, more so if we are talking about global surgery. We are all interested in improving surgical care globally, and I think a collaboration through InterSurgeon is essential to that. Using InterSurgeon, I can talk with people across the world and get access to professionals and opportunities to grow, which is super important especially being from LMIC, where we don’t have a lot of those. I think InterSurgeon is essentially like a bridge to achieve, in our case gender equity, but overall to deliver better care to our communities globally.”
GEIGS in 5 years
When asked about the future of GEIGS, Co.chair, Dr. Mayunga believes the next five years must be about embedding gender equity into the everyday architecture of surgical systems. The organisation also hopes to expand its reach to more than 100 countries and strengthen its role as both a convening platform and a technical partner in shaping training environments and policy conversations.
To visit the GEIGS profile click here
- https://gendereqglobalsurg.wixsite.com/geigs/aboutus accessed 30th January 2026
