Marielle Smith (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

When you look across our healthcare system you don't have to dig very deep at all to see example after example of where women have been discriminated against, where women have felt unheard, where women have experienced bias and where women ultimately have been let down. We see this across a spectrum of women's health issues when it comes to maternal health care, when it comes to menopause, when it comes to issues like endometriosis. We see women's pain at best being ignored and at worst not being believed, and that can have terrible and devastating consequences for the women involved and for their health care. We have known this for a long time and it was confirmed last week when the end gender bias in the healthcare system survey was released, which showed that 70 per cent of women experience bias in the diagnosis and treatment of their condition, 70 per cent of women felt like they had experienced bias at the GP and 70 per cent of experts felt women were only slightly or not at all believed about particular health issues.

When women are not believed, when their pain is dismissed, when they are not heard by healthcare professionals in the system that is there to treat them, it has devastating consequences for these women. It has devastating consequences for how their healthcare needs are addressed. That's why the Senate Community Affairs Committee is currently inquiring into menopause. We need to change the conversation that happens at a practitioner level when it comes to women's health, and we need to change the investment and support that is there to care for, and hear, women so that their needs aren't ignored. We as a government have so much work underway. This survey should be read by everyone in this chamber because women's voices deserve to be heard.