Louise Miller-Frost (Boothby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I had the honour of launching the South Australian Women's Health Research Translation Network at SAHMRI. The network is a body that seeks to empower and improve equity, health and quality of life for Australian women by integrating prevention, health care, research and translation for the benefit of all women. This organisation seeks to address the challenges in accessing equitable funding for conditions that are specific to women's health care and women's experience. This can lead to women having their symptoms minimised and hence diagnoses missed or delayed—for instance: endometriosis, polycystic ovary syndrome and even ovarian cancer. Or symptoms can be modelled on a male model—for instance, the classic cardiac symptoms of crushing chest pain may not be the experience of a woman having a heart attack and she may have delayed treatment as a result.

The network also looks at the challenges facing women researchers in accessing grants and funding. It is well documented that academics and those in the higher education sector are often operating in a gig-economy-like situation, operating contract to contract and grant to grant. This is particularly pronounced among the more junior researchers, who are disproportionately woman. It was great to be there. It was a really great reminder that, when it comes to gender equality, our work remains unfinished. I would like to recognise that this is National Women's Health Week and that this is a really important topic for us.