I hold his hand today. One day, he will stand up for equality and lift others with him

This year’s International Women’s Day theme, Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls, is not abstract to me. It is personal. As a mum to an awesome toddler, I see the future in his eyes. As a GP, PCN Clinical Director and National healthcare leader, I advocate for equitable access, safer systems and compassionate care and i see firsthand how our daily choices shape the future.

Balancing leadership with bedtime stories reminds me that such legacy is shaped in our everyday decisions to stand up for equality. It lives in the policies we influence, the voices we choose to amplify and the standards we refuse to lower.

Justice in healthcare also means addressing the structural inequities that shape women's health and women's careers-ranging from access to care and quality of maternity care to  pay, progression and opportunities for leadership.

Action means building systems that endure, so equity is embedded, not optional.

Within my professional home at the Royal College of General Practitioners, in boardrooms and as a frontline GP, I will keep making the daily decision to turn rights into reality, justice into standards and action into lasting change. I hope you choose to do the same too.

So that when my son grows up, equality is not just another tickbox module to complete, but instead it is embedded by default in the way we live and lead. And as a boy, and one day a man, he would know to stand up for equality for all women and girls, as instinctively as he breathes.

That is the legacy we build together, within and beyond our clinical rooms, for this generation and the next.