This began with one woman's experience. It became a question much bigger than one story.
Women Working Well began because I lived through the space between women's health, healthcare and work — long before I had words for what that space was.
I knew something was wrong. I kept searching for answers. And at the same time, I kept trying to work.
What happened next changed the direction of my life — and eventually became the reason Women Working Well exists.
The question that stayed with me:
What happens to a woman's working life while she is still trying to understand what is happening to her health?
That question became the foundation for Women Working Well.
For years, I knew something didn't add up.
The symptoms were real. The impact was real. The answers were not.
My experience did not begin with a diagnosis. It began much earlier — with symptoms, uncertainty, repeated healthcare seeking and the feeling that something more was happening than the explanations I had been given.
Over time, the health impact became harder to separate from everyday life and work. I was trying to function, keep appointments, manage symptoms and make sense of what was happening — all while remaining part of a workplace.
For a long time, I believed the problems I was experiencing might be perimenopause. But I kept saying the same thing to my partner: the severity did not seem to match what other women were describing.
I kept saying:“Something else is wrong.”
I could not yet name it. But I knew my experience did not fit neatly into the explanation I had been given.
A diagnosis can be the end of a long story — not the beginning.
This is a simplified version of my health journey. Its purpose is not to document every medical detail, but to show how long health, healthcare and working life can overlap before an answer is reached.
Symptoms began early.
I saw a specialist at 16. By 18, I was pregnant. There were already signs that women's health would be a recurring part of my life, but no lasting explanation for what I was experiencing.
An emergency laparoscopy still did not produce answers.
When my daughter was four, I underwent an emergency laparoscopy. I was told nothing had been found and nothing was wrong. A Mirena was later suggested and became part of managing symptoms.
Symptoms changed and became increasingly difficult to manage.
Severe gastrointestinal symptoms, migraines and other health issues began affecting daily function. I kept working while also repeatedly seeking medical help.
I kept presenting for healthcare.
There were repeated GP visits, scans, investigations and even an inpatient hospital stay. Tests did not provide a clear explanation. I continued to feel that something else was wrong.
The explanation changed.
Eventually, the health picture became clearer. What I had been experiencing was not simply the story I had been telling myself about perimenopause. The eventual diagnoses included deep infiltrating endometriosis and adenomyosis.
Sometimes women know that the explanation does not fit.
That does not mean we always know what the diagnosis is. It means uncertainty itself can become part of the health journey.
“I had spoken to other women experiencing perimenopause and kept thinking: this doesn't feel like the same thing. Something else is happening.”
The health story did not stop at the workplace door.
The longer the health journey continued, the harder it became to separate what was happening to me from what was happening at work.
I was still trying to work.
Health impact can exist long before a person becomes visibly absent from work.
And the workplace response became part of the story.
By the time things reached a breaking point, I felt I was becoming a shell of myself — a person I no longer recognised.
The experience of being unwell was difficult. The experience of trying to remain at work while unwell, without clear answers and without the support I needed, made it harder.
Eventually, I was no longer in that workplace.
My partner saw a different part of the journey.
He saw what happened outside the workplace too — the appointments, the uncertainty, the physical impact, the frustration and the change in the person he knew.
That perspective mattered.
Women Working Well was never meant to become a page only about my individual diagnosis. The conversations at home kept returning to a larger question: how can somebody be trying this hard to get answers, trying this hard to keep functioning, and still fall through the gaps between healthcare and work?
My experience was the catalyst. It is not the whole issue.
The more I looked, the clearer it became that many women experience different versions of the same gap.
Different health experiences.
Periods. Endometriosis. Adenomyosis. PCOS. Fertility treatment. Pregnancy. Pregnancy loss. Menopause. Cancer. Chronic illness. Mental health. Surgery. Recovery. Or symptoms that still do not have a name.
Different working lives.
Office work. Shift work. Physical work. Leadership. Casual work. Self-employment. Caring responsibilities. Travel. Frontline roles. Remote work. Jobs with little flexibility.
The same space between.
How do you keep working? When do you speak? Who listens? What help exists? What happens if the workplace response is poor? And what happens next?
The problem is not only women's health. And it is not only work.
Women Working Well exists because so much can happen in the space between a woman's health, her healthcare journey and her working life.
That space is where WWW is building the Bridge.
From lived experience to something practical.
Women Working Well is being built as an information, research, advocacy and practical-support initiative.
A place to begin.
Help women understand the work interface, prepare conversations and navigate the Bridge in their own time.
A better first response.
Help managers listen, respect privacy, understand work impact and explore support without trying to diagnose.
Build the conditions.
Leadership, culture, policy, capability, flexibility and consistency make better workplace responses possible.
Understand the whole journey.
The Global Women and Work Study is being developed to investigate what happens across health, healthcare and work.
Why this sits within a workplace health and safety context.
Women Working Well is an Inca Safety initiative because workplace systems, leadership, risk, culture and organisational practice all influence what happens when health begins affecting work.
WWW is not a sales page.
This site exists to provide information, support research, encourage better workplace conversations and make useful evidence easier to access.
Commercial WHS consulting remains separate through Inca Safety.
Inca Safety contact page →This began with a question I could not let go of.
How many women are trying to keep working while navigating symptoms, healthcare, uncertainty, treatment and workplace responses — and what could change the journey?
The next chapter belongs to all of us.
Our Story explains why this began. About WWW explains what it has become.
Women Working Well has grown from one lived experience into an information, research, evidence and practical-support initiative focused on the space between women's health, healthcare and working life.
What Women Working Well has become →Sometimes being heard is not about having the perfect words. It is about whether the person on the other side is willing to listen, believe and respond with respect.