GEN VIC 2021/2022 Budget Submission – Investing in women's health and wellbeing
We are proud to have contributed to GEN VIC’s recent release of its 2021/2022 budget submission, Towards a Gender Equal Recovery. The submission outlines the important moves the Victorian Government must take to ensure women are safe, healthy and equal in our community and sets out six priorities for government spending:
- Gender equal job creation
- Boosting women’s health services
- Gender-responsive budgeting architecture
- Imagining a care economy
- Creating a gender and disaster workforce, and
- Strengthening gender-equal communities.
Increased experiences of mental health issues and access to sexual and reproductive health services are just two of the gendered impacts of the Covid-19 pandemic. At Birth for Humankind, each person we support is facing their own unique set of challenges and barriers to accessing the support they need and have experienced additional barriers throughout the pandemic. Our contribution to the submission reiterated these inequities in accessing maternal health information, support and continuity of care, especially for women experiencing social isolation and financial disadvantage.
More needs to be done to ensure maternal health care services are accessible and culturally sensitive for key priority populations, as recommended in GEN VIC's 6 key priorities for boosting investment for women's health services.
“Despite being in the middle of a global health emergency, women’s health services have not had an increase to core funding since their inception in the 1980s. If we want women to take up vaccines without fear of impact on pregnancies, to return to cancer screening services and access mental health support, we need women’s health services to be resourced for today – not a Victoria forty years ago.”
– GEN VIC, Towards a Gender Equal Recovery
Download and read the submission here.