Manchester’s history is packed with inspiring women - the city found itself at the centre of the national campaign for equal voting rights, as Emmeline Pankhurst, now immortalised with a statue on St Peter’s Square, led the suffragette movement.
Joining Emmeline - a host of other brave Mancunian women including novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, and Middleton botanist Lydia Becker.
Fast-forward more than a century on, and you’ll find a city still full of women pushing to make the world a better place - from Dr Erinma Bell, the influential Manchester peace activist who was awarded an MBE for her work to rid Moss Side streets of gun crime, to Salfordian athlete Dame Sarah Storey, Great Britain's most successful female Paralympian.
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For International Women’s Day this year, the Manchester Evening News spoke to 35-year-old Charlotte Haldane - a trailblazing medic working across the country to save lives with the North West Air Ambulance Charity, among a slew of other incredible feats.
Along with her work as a consultant on our region's airborne emergency service, Charlotte does paediatric retrieval - transporting sick babies and children to intensive care in Cambridge, where she lives. There, too, she supports the local air ambulance charity with her years of expertise.
The 35-year-old, whose family hails from Walkden, also holds the rank of major in the Army reserves.
Charlotte's work takes her not only up and down the country, but around the world. Yet another branch to her day job is expedition, TV and film medicine.
The doctor treats trekking teams, and stars of the screen, as they operate in far-flung corners of the globe.
Among the shoots she has provided the medical care for - Will Smith's Welcome to Earth, Expedition with Steve Backshall, and the latest SAS: Who Dares Wins series.
But creating the career of her dreams came with challenges as she navigated the well-trodden path medicine, surrounded by some who told her she should stick to working in a hospital.
“I wanted to be a doctor from the time I was four-years-old. My two options were to play for Manchester United or become a doctor.
"Since then, I’ve watched too much Casualty, and I just became a geek at medical school," Charlotte tells the M.E.N.
“I always wanted to be a pre-hospital doctor, but there wasn’t really a permanent, full-time job for that, it didn’t exist.
“When I was more junior, there were people pushing for me to go back to regular emergency medicine, but I didn’t want to go back to hospital because it doesn’t suit me.
“I was really clear that I was going to be a pre-hospital doctor, or I wasn’t going to be a doctor anymore."
In her role as a pre-hospital doctor, Charlotte treats seriously ill or injured people before they get to hospital, and during emergency transfer to hospital or between hospitals.
Yet, Charlotte says this important work outside of the regular wards has been met with questions from some circles of the medical profession.
“You’re supposed to become a consultant, you’re supposed to fit into this box, then everyone will be happy. Any deviation from that training is seen as quite renegade.
“I wasn’t meant to live in a hospital, it would have made me really unhappy because I need to be outside with challenges and days that are different.
"I think we'd have happier doctors if they were able to make their own choices sometimes, we'd perhaps have less leaving the profession.
“What’s really important to me is that I want to be a good doctor and for my colleagues believe in my work - so many of them have been amazing and inspiring, encouraging me to break the barriers."
The keen Man U fan has spent her life breaking the barriers.
When she was a youngster, a Cheshire borough changed the rules for their local football games so she could play on the boys team. Girls had not been allowed to play with the boys until that point.
Now, looking to the future, Charlotte wants to push for more change, asking for the medical profession to be more flexible in its approach to family life.
More women 'at the top of their game' would be encouraged to join often male-dominated specialisms, like emergency medicine, if rotas were not so rigid, enabling them to have room for both their careers and children, she explains.
“Finding my own way through medicine has been hard, having to trail blaze and make a pathway can be quite difficult," says Charlotte. "But I’m doing it for other people as well.
"I want to empower people and show them that you can be a good and legitimate doctor while practising medicine this way.
"I see the fragility of life every day in this job, it's a reminder that life is really short and that it's so important to be happy."
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