For much of modern medical history, women’s bodies have been treated as anomalies. Clinical trials overwhelmingly relied on male participants, with the male body serving as the “default template” for diagnosis, treatment, and drug development. The exclusion of women – often justified by fears of hormonal “complexity” or potential risks to fertility – has had long-term consequences, from higher rates of adverse drug reactions in women to the misdiagnosis of conditions such as heart disease.
In South Africa, this legacy has compounded existing inequities; as women, we continue to face disproportionate barriers in accessing healthcare, while local research has historically been skewed towards infectious diseases such as HIV and tuberculosis, rather than the broad-spectrum uniqueness of our physiology. Although critical, this focus has often left gender-specific health needs underexplored, from endometriosis, PCOS and the unique ways non-communicable diseases manifest in women.
While South African medical research is beginning to shift, the long shadow of exclusion still asserts both global and local understandings of women’s health. As August is Women’s Month, we felt it was imperative to shift our focus to women’s health, and we are very grateful to have had the opportunity to speak to Dr Katlego Selikane; a medical doctor, public health advocate and communicator. Dr K, as she’s affectionately known, sits at the intersection of medicine and culture; through her platforms Clueless Moms and the podcast Meet me in my Corner, she is a tireless advocate for women’s health, and for building a medically attuned, healthier South Africa at large.
Portrait courtesy of Dr Katlego Selikane
Image by Cliff Booth via Pexels
“I grew up in Pretoria, the Jacaranda city, and I sometimes miss the slower life there,” Dr K tells us of her early childhood. At just 13, a defining moment set her on the path to medicine: “A younger boy I took care of at school, as a prefect, suddenly passed away. He had woken up with a headache, vomited a few times, and died on the way to hospital. I remember researching symptoms on my mom’s computer and convincing myself it must have been a brain tumour. From that day on, I told myself; I want to go to other parts of Africa and teach people about brain tumours so that no one has to go through this again.” Timely healthcare can be the difference between life and death, and this experience crystallised Dr Katlego’s early sense of medicine as a calling with real social impact.
By high school, Dr K’s dream had sharpened into a specific ambition; “I entered high school already knowing I wanted to become a neurosurgeon. I even wrote a letter to the late Dr Mokgokong, who separated the Siamese twins in South Africa, asking him to mentor me. He never responded, but from that point on I was really passionate about medicine.” This kind of determination speaks to the unique way in which healthcare in our South African context is a route to justice and representation, in a system long marked by inequity – and is often why a pathway to medicine is understood as a deep calling and commitment.
“I always loved the arts – I wrote plays, even got a scholarship – but my mom encouraged me to study something science-related first,” Dr K shares, of the tension that she felt between creativity and science that would later inform her unique voice as a doctor who bridges clinical knowledge with culture and communication; “I ended up in a bridging course at Tuks, and from there I was chosen as one of only 20 students to enter the medical programme. That’s how I got into medicine. It really challenged me and it’s part of the reason I still struggle with an inner critic or imposter syndrome. The pressure to be perfect – because you literally have people’s lives in your hands – was hectic. I did it, and I graduated with four distinctions.”
Dr K’s focus on women’s health grew organically, as the glare of the system’s inequities became apparent, alongside her own attunement to the feminine experience. “It wasn’t something specific in the curriculum that made me choose women’s health. I think I’ve always just found myself serving women; even when I was running a makeup artistry business during medical school, women would sit with me and open up about their lives. I realised how much women carry, and how much we need safe spaces to share.” This instinct to listen became personal during Dr K’s own pregnancy, which she describes as “one of the toughest things I’ve ever gone through.” She struggled with cervical insufficiency, or cervical incompetence—a condition whose very name, Dr K notes, carries an unfair implication of bodily failure. “It felt like my body had failed at its most basic task of protecting my child.”
The isolation Dr Katlego experienced was compounded by the lack of representation, saying that “during my pregnancy I felt completely isolated. I couldn’t find anyone who looked like me speaking about cervical insufficiency. The only stories I found were white women in the UK on YouTube. There was nothing to ease my anxiety.” It was this gap in knowledge and visibility that motivated Dr K to form a community, unique to South African women; “when I finally decided to share my story publicly, it grew into a movement called Clueless Moms. I realised that what really traumatises women is not knowing, and that when people have information, they can make informed decisions, they can advocate for themselves, and they can collaborate with their doctors.” Through Clueless Moms, Dr K has turned personal struggle into collective empowerment, highlighting how information, representation, and safe spaces are as crucial to women’s health as clinical expertise itself.
Image by Cliff Booth via Pexels
Portrait courtesy of Dr Katlego Selikane
Dr K approaches medicine with a firm belief in collaboration and patient agency, “I’ve always believed that the relationship between doctor and patient is collaborative. I’m not here to tell you what to do with your body – I’m here to guide you so that together we can make the best decisions for your health,” and that reproductive rights are central to this ethos, “the most unfortunate thing is that we’ve just been reduced to child bearers. When we make choices that empower us in different ways – choices that don’t include children – our rights are infringed upon. If I want the agency to prevent something that could possibly destroy my life, why is that taken away from me? I had support when I had my child, and still I struggled with my mental health, with anxiety, with juggling everything. How do we expect a girl of 17, 18, or even 21 to handle such an enormous task?”
As Dr K points out, the rise of conservative attitudes around the world is felt and known here, despite the progressivism of our Constitution. Her words underline the obscuring reality, at odds with the very values that upon which our nation is envisioned; access to safe abortion care should be the bare minimum afforded to girls and women in South Africa, yet systemic and societal barriers too often prevent them from exercising this fundamental right.
Dr K describes how she has witnessed these barriers firsthand, reflecting that “Yes, termination of pregnancy is legal in our country, it’s enshrined in our Constitution – but in practice there are so many limitations. If there aren’t laws restricting us, then strategic barriers are created to take away our voice and our agency. I call it biological warfare against women. When you tell me I cannot do what I need to do medically for myself, that’s war on my body and my choices,” and recalls a particularly distressing case from her advocacy work; “We tried to help a 17-year-old girl in the Western Cape. She was well within the legal time frame, but we kept being sent from pillar to post: the nurse isn’t here, the ultra sound isn’t working, come back next week. Weeks kept passing until it was too late. She was forced to keep the pregnancy.” Cases like these illustrate how legal rights alone are insufficient without practical, accessible care – and how devastating for a young girl to be thrust into the role of motherhood due to systematic negligence.
“If we’re stigmatising sexual behavior, especially in women, if we’re pushing purity culture in women, how does a young girl tell you that, ‘Hey, listen, I got assaulted, I got abused?’” Dr K asks, and emphasises that even when young women responsibly seek care, fear and misinformation dominate their experience; “We had a young girl come in who’d had like three TOPs (termination of pregnancy) or two TOPs this year. She’s afraid that she’s pregnant again, but she’s not pregnant again — it’s just the hormones that still have to go down. But the fact that she had that fear was telling me that she’s still engaging in sexual practices that are unprotected.” Dr Katlego’s work highlights the urgent need for safe and stigma-free reproductive healthcare, and as we know, women’s autonomy over their bodies is a matter of dignity and survival.
Dr K is clear about the persistent barriers young women face in accessing reproductive healthcare in South Africa. “I know why that could be happening. Two things could be happening: it’s either that she doesn’t feel that she has the agency to ask for protection, or she’s also of that notion that, ‘Oh, sex is better without protection.’” She explains that even when girls are encouraged to take care of themselves, the clinic environment often discourages them. “When you ask them to start taking care of themselves and to go to the clinic, they always come back and say, ‘Yeah, but you know, the nurses are not nice.’”
For Dr K, women-centred healthcare must be reflected at all levels of our medical institutions: “We’re not creating conducive spaces. The spaces that do exist should allow a young woman to come in there and feel safe and feel empowered enough to make a decision that can really help them out in their lives.”
“When we look at South Africa, we’re looking at a lot of things. We’re looking at access. We still see women crossing the river to go to an antenatal clinic – that happened in 2024, if not 2023. I’m not talking about 1990-something. That happened now.” Even when women do have access, the quality of care is often poor, and beyond clinical care, cultural barriers remain; “We also have poor accessibility to information and education. And we have this whole purity culture that does sit in South Africa. We do have it. We really, really do.”
Dr K’s passion is transforming healthcare into a tool for self-determination; that it is inseparable from agency and leadership: understanding your body, your options, and your rights is the first step toward empowerment. “My ultimate intention is to really help people — not just women, actually people — make informed decisions about their health,” Dr K shares, “Medicine sits at the heart of what I do. It gives me legitimacy so it gets me into rooms. But once I’m in those rooms, I don’t take it for granted that I’m there. Once I get into that room, the biggest thing I always want to share or to help people understand is that we’re in this world together for a reason — to build something, but to also connect with ourselves quite deeply and to become leaders.”
For us at CEC, our deep, unyielding commitment to South Africa is centred in reimagining and celebrating potential – this is how we see our collective responsibility, and as Dr K shares this sentiment from the perspective of medicine, “The problems of South Africa are not problems that are supposed to limit us. In actual fact, they are opportunities. We need to get to a point where we start to see the potential of South Africa instead of seeing its past anymore. I want young people to rise up and start to take a stand, but also to take responsibility, for them to understand that education and literacy sits at the heart of everything.”
For Dr K, advocacy and policy are practical tools to turn these principles into tangible change, and her work is already making strides in bringing these conversations to the cultural centre of South African media. When women are supported; society is stronger, more resilient, and more just. Their perspectives shape communities and their wellbeing anchors collective growth. At CEC, we hold this as central to our vision: a South Africa in which the role of women’s role is foundational to the future we all share.
Follow Dr Katlego’s work at Clueless Moms and Meet Me In The Corner With Dr K
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Written by Holly Beaton
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