Who we are

About the Victorian Women’s Health Services Network

Grid of circles, each representing one of the 12 Victorian women's services. Inside the circles are images of a diverse range of women and places.

We have been a driving force progressing and shaping Victoria’s women’s health and equality space for four decades.

Today, the 12 women’s health services funded through the state government’s Victorian Women’s Health Program operate under the title the ‘Victorian Women’s Health Services Network’. This enables us to work as a coordinated, mutually reinforcing statewide network comprising both place-based and specialist services.

Our beginnings

Victoria’s women’s health sector grew out of the dire need to put women’s health, equality and safety in the public health spotlight. Across the 1970s and 1980s, the women’s liberation movement agitated for an end to the lack of research, funding and attention to women’s health. Fed up with being left out of public conversations about their health and lives, women across Victoria came together to form the networks, advocacy groups and organisations that would eventually become the women’s health sector.

The 1985 state government discussion paper Why women’s health? was developed to support a new Victorian women’s health policy. It drew on community consultation with 7000 women, including the early incarnations of present-day women’s health services. The subsequent report recommended the establishment of a dedicated Victorian Women’s Health Program (VWHP). Existing women’s health services would receive programmatic funding from the Health Department for the first time and new women’s health services would be established so that there would be one in each region by 1991/1992. The sector would deliver a dual strategy of working with directly with women, while also working with service providers to improve their responsiveness to women.

A 1987 tender process identified the first VWHP-funded Victorian women’s health centre and statewide women’s health information centre. Over the two decades, VWHP-funded women’s health services were established across the state, each growing out of existing place-based women’s health networks, groups and services. After a long history working alongside the women’s health sector, Women with Disabilities Victoria received VWHP funding for the first time in 2022.

Timeline of Victorian Women’s Health Program funding

Infographic of timeline: 1987 Women’s Health Service in the West (now GenWest) & Healthsharing Women (now Women’s Health Victoria) 1988 Loddon Campaspe Women’s Health Service (now Women’s Health Loddon Mallee) 1990 Women’s Health East & Women in In

  • “The development of funded women’s health services in the 1980s built on the momentum of 1970s Women’s Liberation activism. It foregrounded the importance of incorporating women’s lived experience and knowledge into health services design, delivery and research. But also, most importantly, it positioned women’s health issues within the context of the overall structure of a society which disadvantaged women and denied the legitimacy of our voices.”

    – Dr Philomena Horsley, medical anthropologist and feminist activist (Healthsharing Women’s Health Resource Service, 1992–1996)

  • “Right from the early days, the women’s health service began collecting information about women’s experiences so that we could provide evidence to influence understandings of women’s health at the policy, legislative and service delivery end, as well as shape and contribute to the research agenda.”

    – Dr Robyn Gregory, women’s health, family violence and prevention of violence against women consultant (Women’s Health West 2008–2021)

  • “Women’s health services are in the unique position of being able to really focus on prevention and taking an effective health promotion approach. Because the sector had a mandate to address women’s health issues, they were able to use that and broaden their activities beyond just individual and clinical health. To broaden thinking around prevention and population impact, rather than just at the individual level.”

    – Sandra Morris, Senior Engagement and Strategy Manager, Birth for Humankind (Women’s Health In the North 2009–2021)