SPEECH BY THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON E. G. WHITLAM4, M. P.,
AT THE WOMEN AND HEALTH CONFERENCE,.
BRISBANE, 25 August 1975
one of the regular activities of the United
Nations is to designate a" Ayear to focus attention upon
a particular topic, to create an awareness of a*
particular problem. With this end in view the United
Nations proclaimed 1975 as International Wlomens Year
in order to recognise the important contribution which
women have made to the social, political, economic and
cultural life of their countries and to intensify the
action required to advance the status of women.
For the first time an Australian government
has * committed itself to an extensive program designed
to achieve the aims of the year. Our reasons for so*
doing are two-fold. First, the government recognises
the importance of the United Nations and its activities,'
in the area of human-rights as well as in other areas.
Secondly, the government has shown its awareness of
the problems which face women in our society today and
its commitment to attempting to overcome them.
Within the context of the United Nations
objectives for the year equality, development and
peace Australia has formulated three overall objectives
for our International Women's Year program. The most
important of these objectives is the need to reassess
and change those attitudes towards women which are
harmful and limiting. Together with this, the areas of
discrimination against women in our society must be
identified and a concerted att-empt made to overcome them.
It is also intended that the year be a joyous one emphasising
the creative and positive in women.
It has been of basic concern to us that in " the
course of this year we reach most if not all women in
Australia. There are certain areas which affect, or
potentially affect, every girl and woman in our society,.
whatever her education, her cultural background, her
economic status, her beliefs, her occupation or her way
of life. The health of women is clearly one of the most
impbortant of these areas and the Australian National
Advisory Committee for the year has given it high priority.
Primary emphasis has been-placed on the need to give
women a better understanding of their bodies and of the
many diseases and disorders from which women suffer at one
time or another in their lives. Research in this area
is quite inadequate and until recently no attempt had
been made by governments to provide for these needs.
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A' great deal more needs to be known about the health
of women, the causes of their health problems, and the
correct treatment for them.
Health conferences are a regular feature of
the Australian scene but this is the first conference in
Australia, and probably in the world, which has dealt
exclusively with women's health.
Health conferences are normally restricted to
professional people and when they do involve " nonprofessiondls"
they are restricted to one particular
aspect of health. This conference is being attendedby
people with widely varying backgrounds who have
themselves decided the program's contents. This is
yet another innovative and most important feature of
the conference. It is obvious from the response to this
conference that many people are concerned about women' s
health needs in our changing society and many women
are themselves becoming increasingly concerned that
these needs be seriously and adequately considered.
There is much to be learnt.
It is appropriate for me to pay tribute to the
Department of Health which in conjunction with the
National Advisory Committee has organized this conference
as its special project for the year. Each government
department and agency was asked to develop a program and
initiate special activities during 1975. The Institute
of Criminology, for example, also in'conjunction with.
the National Advisory Committee has already held two
seminars, one on women as victims of crime, and one on
the participation of women in the criminal justice system..
Further, this conference is the first of three
extremely important conferences each of which is concerned
with issues of fundamental irnoortance to each woman
and man in our society. The next conference, which
begins next week in Canberra, is on Women and Politics.
Its-aim is to create an increasing political awareness
amongst women and to give women the knowledge necessary
for them to bring about the policies, programs and other.
changes which they so justly are demanding and so truly
need. Australia is also to host a United Nations
interregional conference in November on Women, the Media
and the Arts: the Communication ofL Attitudles. This.
conrerence will loo at tne way women are portrayed .1in all..
forms of communication, be it advertising, daily papers,
art, pop songs, Jokes, or literature. We are all well
aware that too often quite unrealistic and even damaging
images of women are communicated to us through these
media and these images in turn reinforce already existing
assemptions which limit and distort the capacities,
potential and life patterns of women and girls.
In the field of women's health the most significant
initiative taken by the g-overnment has been the funding
* of the Leichhardt Women's Community Health Centre. The
aim of this centre is to meet a need expressed by women
for a health service staffed by women and directed solely
towards the special health needs of women. The proposal
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put to the Minister for Health by a group of Sydney women
received immediate attention. It was endorsed by the Hospitals
and Health Services Commission and an initial grant of $ 33,000
to establish the health centre was announced by the Minister.
The centre makes an annual application for funds to continue
and expand its operations. So far it has received a total
of $ 285,735. Since then the government has funded a number of
further such centres under the Community Health Program.
Submissions for women's comtmunity health centres have been
put before the Hospitals and Health Services Commission.
The Commission has supported the establishment of
women's health centres in the belief that such action is not
only necessary in itself but would help to influence the traditi(
health care system to cope more adequately and effectively with
women's health problems. The Australian government is, as far
as I know, the only government in the world that has listened
and responded to such requests from women.
Four centres are fully operational ( Leichhardt,
Liverpool, Melbourne Perth); two centres are part-operational
( Adelaide and Newcastle) and one, the Brisbane Women's
Community Aid Association, has still to find premises.
We are also funding women's refuges and'shelters. The
concept of the refuge has grown out of a response to the
desperate plight of many women. A women's refuge is a place
for a woman, with or without children,. to go when she has nowherE
else; she may be destitute or confused or needing to escape
her existing situation.
On 19 June, the Australian Minister for Health, Dr
Everinghamn, announced a national plan aimed at helping women in
social and domestic crisis situations. Through the Community
Health Program, women's refuges in all states will receive
Australian government funds to pay-for staff, rent, renovation
of premises, equipment, food and other operating costs. Dr
Everingham said 11 organisations would receive a total of
$ 211,885 under the plan.
Refuges have been approved for immediate assistance
in Brisbane, Townsville, Glebe, Marrickville, Liverpool,
Ringwood/ Croydon, Hobart, Launceston, Adelaide and Perth.'
There are now women's refuges in every state and in
the Australian Capital Territory. Perhaps the best known in the
Sydney refuge, Elsie, the first women's refuge to open in
Australia, which has been operating since March 1974.
Many projects relating to the health and welfare of
women have also been funded by the government on the advice
of the National AdvisoryCommittee for International
Women's Year. These have included the production of a
film on cystitis, a conference on Women and Madness. a
counselling service for parents who have feelings of
violence towards their children, a research project on
the difficulties encountered by women who have responsibility
for aged parents or other dependents, a project into the
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incidence and seriousness of violence to women, the
publication of a booklet giving accurate information on the
availability of and techniques used for legal abortions
and associated contraceptive matters, research on the
particular problems of disabled women and the publication
of research into women medical graduates. We have also
invested in a television series on human reproduction
in the belief that no area of human behaviour is more
private and more sacred whilst at the same time having
ineluctable public consequences. The. insights to be gained
from such a series are not only important globally, a
. necessary precondition to a rational understanding of issues
relating to population and the future development of
societies, but are of deep importance to every individual,
for it is a woman's reproductive capacity which basically
distinguishes her from man. All funding relating to the
health of women, as in all other areas, has been within
the guidelines which I tabled in Parliament in December
last year. It is the government's policy that all persons
should have ready access to family planning advice so
that they may achieve the number and spacing of children
they desire. It is also our policy that women should
have access to all the knowledge required to enable them
to make informed decisions in this area. The broad
objective is improvement of the quality of life for both
parents and children.
The Australian government has taken steps towards
the evolution of a national policy on family planning.
In 1973/ 74 $ 300,000 was expended and in 1974/ 75 well over
million was allocated to this program. We also appointed
a consultant in family planning, Dr Stephania Seidlecky, who
had previously been on the staff of the Leichhardt Women's
Community Health Centre. Dr Seidlecky has already made
many valuable contributions to the family planning program.
There is at present no separate policy on women's
health in Australia. Women's health needs are subsumed
under policies relting to community and mental health,
rural health, aboriginal health, rehabilitation and
hospitals. There is, however, an historical exception,
namely hospitals run by women for women as well as the
more recent evolution of women's health centres and refuges.
It was an understanding of the pressing need for
health services relating directly to the health problems
of women which gave birth in 1899 to the Queen Victoria
Hospital in Melbourne and in 1922 the Rachel Forster
Hospital in Sydney, hospitals staffed by and run for
women. In recent years dissatisfaction with prevalent
attitudes to women's health problems and the paucity of
research into their causes and into their correct treatment
have led to the establishment of womens community health
centres. These centres have invariably been established
by groups of women who, having seen a desperate need
amongst women, be it for health care, shelter or rape crisis
counselling, have voluntarily set about to find a solution.
As well as helping to identify the health needs of
of women, there is one very important question which this
conference should discuss. This is whether or not
women's health needs should be integrated -throughout the
various components of the health service system, as is
at present proposed, or whether they should be separately
considered, as is, for example, aboriginal health.
The very concept of women's health is a troublesom'e
one. it brings to mind those problems or illnesses that
are associated with women: reproduction, suburban
neurosis, valium-dependency, psychotic, disorders and so on.
The concept of men's health jars for noL only does it
not evoke any similar associations with men's illnesses,
but it is no more and no less than the concept of health
itself. In this time of change and of questioning it is
more and more frequently poiLnted out that the seemingly
infinite range of women's skills, abilities and interests
are channelled into too few and limiting roles and that
this causes a great deal of human unhappiness, misery and
distress. This is a difficult claim to gauge but some light
can be thrown on it by looking at phenomena such as
successful and attempted suicide, psychiatric conditions
and drug dependencies. Male suicide rates in Australia have remained
remarkably constant since the 1870' s, as did female rates
from 1870 to 1950, but since then the rate amongst. women
has doubled. This increase has produced an overall suicide
rate in Australia that is one of the highest in the world.
This substantial increase in the suicide rate, particularly
* amongst women over the age of 25, is linked with increased
availability of sedative preparations and subsequent
overdose. There has also been a two-or three-fold increase
in attempted suicides, with twice as many women as men
being treated for this.
Further, there is an increasing incidence of
psychiatric illness amongst women, with the two most common
psychiatric diagnoses depressive states and psychiatric.
neuroses being more common in women than men. Depressive
states are most. co-mmon in women in their thirties, and
psychiatric neuroses most co: mmron in women in their f ' ifties.
More significantly they are twice as common in marri-id as
in single women. Almost three timres as many married'as
single women show severe neurotic symptoms, twice as many
married women as married men have felt that a nervous
breakdown was impending, and many mo e women than men
experience psychological anxiety.
over 10% of women in Australia are dependent on
headache or sleeping pills. About 4 million prescriptions
for valium. are made out each year, the majority of these
prescriptions being written out for women. The abuse of
pain killers can be blamed for about 20% of kidney breakdowns
and again more women than men are so affected.
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These survey results taken together seem to indicate
clearly an increasing distress in Australian women. They
must however be interpreted cautiously for there is another
phenomenon which could well have affected these results.
It is also true in our society that men's lives are
harmed by the limited range of roles and behaviour patterns
which they are allowed. Many of these findings could be
inaccurate because men are less likely than women to admit
to psychological symptoms or to seek help from doctors,
for this could well be seen as weak or' dependent
behaviour and these are the characteristics that our
society allows to women but not to men. Men suffer from
what could well be called the Colonel Glenn syndrome.
It is clear that ours is'a society in which the
quite different expectations about what each sex should
be like and how it should behave or think have become
deeply embodied in its total culture. Anatomy has
become destiny just because anatomical differences at
birth determine which way we are taught to think or behave.
Women are assumed to be naturally emotional, dependent,
easily influenced, cunning s! nsitive, submissive, indecisive
and lacking ambition; men to be naturally logical,
aggressive, independent, objective, direct, decisive,
self confident, and unemotional. These images of women
and men are constantly, daily, reinforced within our
society. Indeed they are constantly and daily reinforced
in medical text books, health professional journals, and
the promotional materials sent by drug companies. It
has been pointed out to me that a recent English study
* of drug advertisements showed basically only two images
of women: the demure in ads for the Pill, and the harrassed
in ads for tranquillisers.
Ads for the Pill showed no women working whether
in the house or in paid employment and little indication
of their social background. Most of the women were
affluent and young ( though not too young), sensible
rather than flighty, demure rather than openly sexual.
In marked contrast the women in the ads for
tranquillisers and anti-depressants are usually older,
with children, more dishevelled and less fashionable than
in those for the Pill and mostly surrounded by piles of
dirty crockery, children, and washing. The message.. in
these ads range from: " lack of space and lack of privacy
spawn unhappy people" ( the suggested solution to this being
to prescribe a tranquilliser to remove the unhappiness)
through to: " the ulcer prone businessman is a cliche of
competitive society. Less recognised as such is the tired
and tearful housewife, resentful of her role, subject
to pressures virtually unknown in former generations"
( the suggested solution being to restore perspective by
tranquillising the disturbed brain chemistry).
Health personnel, like the rest of us, usually
deny that advertisements have any influence on their
behaviour. It may well be true that such advertisements
do not lead these people to administer or prescribe a
particular product but none of us can fail to be
influenced by the overall message. These advertisements
reveal a consistently limited image of women. Women are
not portrayed as independent individuals, each with a
place of her own in society.
It is clear that there are limits to what governments
alone can achieve in this area. Responsibility for change
lies with all concerned. The basic problem, some of whose
manifestations I have briefly touched upon, resides in
the attitudes which individuals and institutions within our
society have towards women, their health, and their bodies
attitudes which women also have towards themselves and
their bodies. The aim of this conference must be to understand,
challenge and change these attitudes. * To do thissuccessfully
all t--hose concerned in this area must listen
and learn how women perceive the world, must understand what
forces shape their experiences both in their formative and
their more mature years, must question why the fullness
of their experiences is so difficult to accept. Wle must
cease to limit their potential, their potential to develop
into diverse human beings.
Good health care for women and effectLive delivery
of family planning and related services must be based
on adequate and sensitive research into causes and methods
o-f treatment but ultimately it can only come -from a.
correct understanding of how,, women feel about their bodies
and a correct understanding of the lives they live.
It gives me great pleasure then to welcome the
participants to this conference, both Australian and
overseas, and to declare this conference open.