By Alliance Chair Bonney Corbin
Australian Women’s Health Alliance Chair, Bonney Corbin, made these remarks at the Maintaining the Momentum in Women’s Health Webinar on 1 November 2024.
Women’s health is having a moment. Nationwide, people are talking about women’s health. Topics like endometriosis and pelvic pain are frequently raised within electorate offices and party rooms. We’ve had numerous women’s health-related senate inquiries. Both the ACT and Tasmania have created abortion funds. Victoria has conducted an Inquiry into Women’s Pain, and Queensland has launched its first Women and Girls’ Health Strategy. We now have a National Women’s Health Advisory Council challenging medical misogyny. And 2024 saw a National Women’s Health Advisory Council at Parliament House.
We’ve also seen media stories about women’s health in major mainstream publications. Corporations are basing advertising campaigns on addressing the gender pain gap and understanding gendered health needs. Community and workplace conversations about women’s health are venturing beyond the expected people and places.
There is momentum to drive improvements in women’s health. The current moment is an opportunity to embed gender-responsive approaches and practices that can improve access, care, and outcomes for all. It’s an opportunity to build a shared understanding of women’s health beyond the medical system. To understand that our health is also about access to education, housing, and economic security. Women’s health is about connection to self, to Country, culture, and kinship, to social and community supports. Our health is about autonomy to participate in democracy, self-determination, and peacekeeping.
Momentum is Not Enough
Attention and momentum alone are not enough to drive long-lasting improvements in women’s health. Currently, there is a failure to fund the implementation of the National Women’s Health Strategy. This failure translates directly to service gaps for women seeking care. Across the country, the patchwork of progress is underpinned by jurisdictional inconsistencies. Some states and territories have, or are drafting, policies on gender equity, gendered health, or sexual and reproductive health, but they lack cohesion and alignment. Some jurisdictions have invested in peak bodies for women’s health, while others remain dissolved in funding cuts of previous decades.
Backlash exists, as we have seen recently with the anti-abortion rhetoric in South Australia and Queensland. Anti-rights movements are gaining momentum because we are within an intergenerational process of transformative change. There is a constant concern that, despite the gains we have seen, we risk having another iteration of health systems designed by and for men. We are constantly only small steps away from losing what has been gained and risk the momentum coming to a crashing halt.
Capitalising on the Momentum
Now is the time to capitalise on the moment to drive lasting change and sustain the momentum. Each state and territory can commit to resourcing and sharing progress on the National Women’s Health Strategy. It is an opportunity to prevent duplications and contradictions within state and territory gendered health policy, and to define gender-responsive health.
We can build capacity and capability for gender-responsive approaches in health advocacy, research, policy, and practice. We can centre lived experience in all areas to inform a system that is responsive to diverse needs. We all have a responsibility to examine what we can do both individually and systemically to fundamentally transform the health system.
How is the Alliance Capitalising on the Moment?
The Australian Women’s Health Alliance has long been committed to gender and health equity, drawing attention to the systemic and gendered issues that impact women’s health. We have refreshed our brand, hosted webinars, facilitated groups and communities of practice, and contributed to national networks and groups leading reforms.
We have released the first two modules of an e-learning suite that supports learners to understand and apply a gender-responsive approach to health and prevention. We have done all of this with collective momentum, driven by early and mid-career authors, policy advisors, and content designers with the power of the pen.
Throughout all of these outputs, we balance our desire for intersectional leadership and representation with the realities of grind culture, community fatigue from experiencing or witnessing local and global injustices, and the burden of unpaid care work that threads through so many of our lives.
Today, I am pleased to share our latest position paper: The Gendered Experience of Chronic Conditions: Insights, Challenges, and Opportunities. This paper was collated by members and policy advisors with lived experience and expertise. It builds on previous work, such as the Women and Non-Communicable Disease (Chronic Conditions) Position Paper (2014). It is one of many examples of how the renewal of the Women’s Health Hub has honoured our herstory alongside evolving evidence, language, and knowledge.
It’s time for the next generation of leaders to mobilise, to evolve the future of women’s health in Australia and beyond.
Bonney Corbin (she/they) has been Chair of Australian Women’s Health Alliance since 2020, following Marilyn Beaumont’s long-term leadership in the role.
Bonney is an urban and regional planner with postgraduate qualifications in public policy and conflict resolution. She has worked at the intersections of women’s rights, gender-based violence and determinants of health for the past 20 years in Australia, South and Southeast Asia, the Middle East and the South Pacific.
Bonney works at MSI Australia as their Head of Policy and Research, is a member of the National Women’s Health Council and sits on a number of health sector boards and committees. Bonney’s previous board appointments include the Planning Institute of Australia, Children by Choice and Working Women’s Centres.
