The Women’s Health Services Network was established in 2022. Twelve Women’s Health Services from across Victoria are working together to advance equality in our communities.
Since our early beginnings as NEWomen in 1992/3, Women’s Health Goulburn North East (WHGNE) has continually evolved while we worked to promote awareness of existing and emerging systemic issues that have contributed to gender inequality. Throughout these evolutions, our goal has remained steadfast – we want to make change for a gender equal world. As feminists, we know that gender equity benefits everyone. As WHGNE enters our next 30 years, our goal is to continue to advocate for transformational change.
To support our advocacy efforts and maximise our impact for women and gender-diverse people across our region, WHGNE works in close partnership with the other 11 Women’s Health organisations across Victoria. Recently we have formed the Women’s Health Service Network (WHSN), bringing together the CEOs of the 12 Victorian Women’s Health organisations. Each CEO offers a unique understanding and perspective of the challenges faced by women in their region, and as an advocacy network, our combined insights and resources position us as a collective voice that cannot be ignored.
On 31 July 2023, the WHSN launched the “Small Change, Big Impact: Women’s Health Services Network Collect Impact Report” (the Report). The Report can be read at the also newly-launched WHSN website. The website is designed to not only house this report but provide a central place to showcase ongoing work of the WHSN including joint submissions regarding policy, media releases, news about the sector and more.
The Report itself captures the collective impact over time of the women’s health sector in advancing Victorian women’s health and equality.
It describes:
- the long-term unique and pivotal role of the women’s health sector in Victoria’s public health infrastructure
- our impact on the state’s strategic policy and programmatic landscape
- the return on investment reflected in the 2022–2023 Victorian Government core additional two-year funding uplift.
The purpose of the report is to strengthen the case for continuing to invest in a well-resourced Victorian women’s health sector at the end of the funding uplift in June 2024. The report shows that our sector’s established infrastructure, decades of experience and best practice ways of working have enabled us to effectively utilise the funding uplift in this first year – resulting in big impacts from small change. By demonstrating what the sector has been able to achieve, this report highlights what is possible by continuing to invest in a strong, well-resourced women’s health sector.
Our key goal is to advance gender equality throughout our communities.
This website and the Report is aimed towards MPs, policymakers and the media in an effort to demystify the work that Women’s Health Services and our colleagues in health promotion across the community undertake.
During the next 12 months we’ll be adding in some of the statewide work that the WHSN will be doing, and if you’d like to keep up to date on the work, please subscribe to our Advocacy newsletter.
When focusing on our region, WHGNE has undertaken a number of advocacy projects during the past few years, and you can read about these campaigns on our website.
I hope that you’ll take a moment to visit the WHSN website and explore the work that we have done together. Because WHGNE isn’t able to do what we do without you.