Jess Rad wanted to be a music teacher. Instead, the 2024 National Diversity Award nominee founded The WomenHood to tackle the unspoken challenges of womanhood, menopause and gender equity.
“The world needs more women in all the positions that decisions are being made. It isn’t just about getting women into leadership but we need to be powerful in our lives and all those places in order to have a trickle-down effect and change the world for the next gen,” says Jess, who is half Persian and grew up in Suffolk in the east of England.
WATCH VIDEO ABOVE: The WomenHood founder Jess Rad talks about the unspoken challenges of womanhood and menopause, and her 2024 National Diversity Award nomination.
The older sister to five siblings says she has always been an advocate of equality even though she had limited beliefs about building her own business. “My dissertation was on the ‘Deconstruction of the Working Woman’ because it perplexed me. I wanted to know how I could be a full-time mother, much like my mom, and the ambitious entrepreneurial person that I was, like my dad. I interviewed 20 senior leadership women at Disney where I worked and, fundamentally, the more they made, the more they outsourced.”
The 42-year-old says that, like most women, she is juggling a lot. “It’s extremely easy to continue to put the needs of everyone else above our own and most of us are pretty expert at that.”
When UK-based Jess became a mom in 2013, she had only been living in Brighton for a year and was keen to be part of her local community. On “one cold December evening” she brought together nine women, all strangers, at the local pub. The next time they were 15. Fast forward a few years and this group was nearly 250. “My conversations with dozens of women were clearly showing me how often we were struggling with a similar challenge, yet due to society shrouding it in shame or secrecy; or perhaps due to the time-poor nature of our lives, we were failing to have the time and space to explore these challenges that were impacting our daily quality of life and often our long-term health.”
After quitting her job, “and with the help of seven amazing women”, Jess set up The WomenHood in 2019. “I advocate for 1% change because I know how inaccessible change can feel to many women today. The first Unspoken Session was held in November, connecting women with amazing female experts to help them stop, listen, learn, share and reflect on their own lives. It was a huge success and since then every guest of every session has said they would recommend us to a friend.”
Through live virtual experiences called The Unspoken Sessions (like Unspoken Women Lives on Instagram), The WomenHood platform connects and supports women on everything from women’s health issues and financial wellbeing to perfectionism and people pleasing. It tackles the hidden realities of relationships, undiagnosed neurodiversities, the confidence gap, burn out and boundaries.
The social entrepreneur also launched The WomenHood at Work “to enable employers to unite their teams and collectively find new ways to support women, while increasing compassion, solidarity and empathy amongst all staff via unspoken conversations.”
But the subject she regularly returns to is the menopause “because it is the one unspoken challenge that every woman will encounter”. This led to the creation of The Menopause Collection. “I was diagnosed with premature menopause at 38 in 2020, so I know first-hand how destructive yet transformative this transition can be in a woman’s life,” emphasises Jess, who is a UK Delegate to the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
“It’s a crying shame that women are benchmarked against the male characteristics. Women are going through their lives without fully understanding their own neurobiology, their own physiology … and I think women are suffering needlessly.’
Jess points out the most common thread is a lack of education and awareness of perimenopause. “There are 34 symptoms, many of which are not known, and with the cognitive ones often beginning first – such as anxiety, insomnia, memory loss –– it’s very difficult to disentangle what feels like unsurprising experiences that many women feel while juggling work/life/children/relationships/and the many demands on them. So the most regular conversation I have with women is helping them understand how to identify it in themselves and find help from a GP or nutritional therapist.”
The Amaze Charity Ambassador adds, “I feel fortunate to have been a part of this menopause revolution from the beginning and to now be very connected to many founders and talented experts in this area. So much so that, in addition to the Menopause Collection on the website there is also Menopause at Work, for businesses to enable organisations to support their female staff.”
Jess admits she is also fortunate to have “an extremely loving and supportive family who have been my rocks” especially over the past few tumultuous years, which included divorce and discovering neurodivergent traits last year. “My Mum, always at the end of the phone to listen and reassure. My sister Victoria immediately shining a light on the opportunity to become ‘the architect of my own life’. And my Dad who forced me to think five years ahead. Very difficult, when you can barely see past the day in front of you.”
She decided to start open water swimming. “I really don’t like the cold, I’m not a strong swimmer and generally wasn’t really an outdoorsy kind of person. However, I got in and absolutely loved it! Of course, I had chosen the right month to start, September is the warmest month of the year.”
She met some other women via the Salty Seabirds community and as autumn began “not only did the cold water undoubtedly and immediately increase my stress resilience and totally change my mood but the connections I’d made with the regulars in our little group became deep and important friendships, too.” They formed their own group, the Early Birds and they’d meet at 6:30 am to swim, regardless of the weather, waves or darkness.
“These early morning winter swims really did change my life. Having also never been a morning person, I found myself getting up at 6 am several times a week, at times having to de-ice the car or wear two coats due to the bitter cold, to go and meet these amazing women in the pitch black and strip down to a swimsuit and face the waves, and our fears, lit only by the moonlight.
“There was something quite magical under these circumstances. So early in the morning. No time or need for make up or to do your hair. No clothes to identify, define or separate us. Just a swimsuit and some gloves and boots. United by our courage and resilience to keep going in despite the height of the waves, despite our fears of the cold, or what may lay beneath. Time again, we showed ourselves and each other how capable we were. My mantra in my head each time was: ‘If I can do this, I can do anything. If I can do this, I can do anything.’ And with those women by my side, I did.” Jess and some of the Early Birds went on to become swimrunners and crossed the Finish Line at the 2022 ÖtillÖ Isles of Scilly Experience Swimrun.
Public speaker Jess has been nominated for the 2024 National Diversity Awards as a Positive Role Model for Gender, in association with ITV (you can vote here.) “I’ve learned you shouldn’t try to do it all. A founder has the idea but you can’t be great at everything so you have to find other people. Recruit for your weaknesses.”
Article first published May 4, 2024. Photos copyright Hayley Samartin.