Case study 4: Building capacity for inclusive and intersectional women’s health and equality work
Bolstered by the leadership of our specialist women’s health services, our sector is helping build Victoria’s capacity to undertake inclusive and intersectional health promotion and primary prevention practice.
Key impacts
For 45 years, Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health has produced research and guides on intersectional primary prevention work. They provide expertise and advice to support legislation, policy and programs to improve the health and wellbeing of migrant and refugee women.
Since its inception, Women with Disabilities Victoria has delivered programs and resources to empower women with disabilities to speak out about their rights. They help organisations to improve gender and disability inclusion, and advocate for better policy and legislation to improve health and wellbeing outcomes for women and girls with disabilities.
We are continually developing and improving our own organisations and ways of working. This is done with support from our specialist women’s health services and through partnerships with other specialist services and experts.
We support other organisations to work in a more inclusive and intersectional way. We deliver professional development activities across every local government area in the state.
We deliver primary prevention programs that are co-designed by people with lived experience of oppression and discrimination. This helps us better understand how we can ensure that primary prevention initiatives reach and include all people that make up Victoria’s population. By sharing this knowledge, more people are able to deliver effective intersectional primary prevention activities.
The result
In recent years, intersectionality and inclusion have become increasingly visible across government strategies and plans. We are a key player in delivering co-designed initiatives that increase the reach of primary prevention work. We continue to support partners across our regions better understand and deliver intersectional and inclusive primary prevention initiatives.
What this looks like – examples of our work
Gender and disability inclusive practice
Women with Disabilities Victoria deliver a range of activities to support primary prevention workers and organisations to become more disability inclusive. This includes auditing and training for other women’s health services. They develop factsheets and guides to support workers, and conduct an annual Statewide Forum for workers from Victoria’s women’s health, community health, prevention, and local and state government workforces.
Our Community, Our Voice program
GenWest is delivering the ‘Our community, our voice’ program, engaging migrant and refugee women affected by the 2022 Maribyrnong floods. Bicultural workers support women to share their stories, provide in-language health and human rights information, and provide mental health support pathways to assist recovery from displacement and disaster trauma.
Equality for All project
Women’s Health Grampians’ ‘Equality for All’ project employs 10 women with lived experience of discrimination as Equality Advocates. The Advocates engage with communities, organisations and workplaces in the region, sharing their experiences of discrimination and what is required to create safe, inclusive environments.
Supporting the rights of women undertaking seasonal work
Gippsland Women’s Health is working to support the rights of women on temporary visas working in the regions agricultural industry. This includes engaging employers and DFAT to improve processes and supports, and ensuring all women arriving from overseas receive information about their rights, family violence and sexual harassment/assault, and how to access support and services in Australia.
“The structure of the women’s health network means that we can access women where they are. It allows the statewides to access the regions and the regional knowledge held at each women’s health service. And, by capacity-building regional services, statewides like Women with Disabilities Victoria are able to expand the reach of their work. Not by speaking for us, but by asking why we’re not in the room in all the spaces they are in. In understanding the societal barriers facing women with disabilities, and seeking to remove these.”
“Women’s health services (WHS) are in the right place for the highly principled equity-driven work needed for effective prevention practice. They know intersectional prevention practice presents opportunities for collaboration, coalition building and allyship in exciting ways to move us collectively closer to a future of more equality and less violence … Today, the WHS collaborate with a wide range of partners that support specific communities impacted by intersecting systems, bringing these partners into the existing prevention infrastructure they have helped to build.”
“Despite systemic resistance, women’s health services (WHS) have long been critical in advocating for the voices of marginalised women to be elevated and their specific needs recognised in service delivery and research initiatives. For example, the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health began in 1995, fully funded by the Commonwealth Government for 20 years. However, it took years of lobbying by WHS before a question about sexual identity was included”