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Victoria asked 13,000 women about pain. Now the Senate is asking nationally.

Women's Health in the South East

Key Facts:

The Senate Select Committee on Women’s Health was established on 19 August 2026. Submission and hearing details will be published on the Parliament of Australia website once membership and reporting dates are settled.

Bridging the Gender Pain Gap: The Inquiry into Women’s Pain Report was released by the Victorian Government in November 2025, led by Safer Care Victoria with the Victorian Women’s Health Advisory Council and the Department of Health.

WHISE’s full statement on the inquiry: https://whise.org.au/womens-health/senate-select-committee-womens-health/

Seven in ten women who responded to Victoria's Inquiry into Women's Pain reported being ignored, dismissed or having their pain minimised by a health professional. Close to a quarter had seen more than ten medical services before receiving a correct diagnosis.

More than 13,000 women, girls, gender diverse people, carers and clinicians took part over eight months — a response nobody had predicted. The inquiry, the first of its kind in Australia, produced 27 recommendations across seven areas.

The Senate has now agreed to ask the same questions nationally.

On 19 August the Senate established a Select Committee on Women's Health, on a motion moved by Senator Marielle Smith, who will chair it. The Committee will examine postpartum healthcare, women's pain and experiences of medical misogyny, fertility and assisted reproduction, and the regulation of medical devices used in women's healthcare, and will hold hearings around the country.

Women's Health in the South East (WHISE) has welcomed the decision and will make a submission.

"The scale of the Victorian response was itself a finding," WHISE Chief Executive Officer Kit McMahon said. "Women had not previously been asked. When they finally were, they came forward in numbers nobody predicted. That tells you the analysis was always there — what was missing was somewhere to put it.

"None of this is bad luck. It is the system running as it was built. Hearing that named from the floor of the Senate narrows the range of things that can be comfortably dismissed."

WHISE is the women's health service for Victoria's Southern Metropolitan Region, covering ten local government areas from Port Phillip through to Cardinia. The region includes the City of Greater Dandenong — the most culturally diverse municipality in Australia, with residents from 157 birthplaces and around 2,000 people seeking asylum, more than any other Victorian council — and the City of Casey, one of the fastest growing councils in the country.

Ms McMahon said the inquiry's reach would determine what it found.

"Senate committees hear from people who already know how to find them. A woman two weeks post-birth, without a car, without English as a first language, with nobody asking how she is — she is exactly the person this inquiry needs to hear from, and exactly the person least likely to make it in front of it."

WHISE will ask the Committee to consider three matters: that health promotion, primary prevention and recovery be counted alongside treatment; that the physical and mental health streams of the inquiry remain connected, given pregnancy and the first postnatal year are a period of elevated family violence risk; and that peri-urban growth corridors be named alongside regional and rural Australia.

"Women in the outer south east navigate distance, transport and stretched services much as regional families do, but sit outside programs written for regional areas because they are technically metropolitan," Ms McMahon said. "It is a drafting point with a very large and fast-growing population behind it."

Submission dates have not yet been set. WHISE's full statement is at whise.org.au/media-release/senate-select-committee-womens-health

About us:

Women's Health in the South East (WHISE) is the women's health service for Victoria's Southern Metropolitan Region, covering ten local government areas — Bayside, Cardinia, Casey, Frankston, Glen Eira, Greater Dandenong, Kingston, Mornington Peninsula, Port Phillip and Stonnington. WHISE is place-based. It works where women live, alongside local government, health services, community organisations and women themselves, on gender equity, women's health and wellbeing, and the primary prevention of violence against women. Its focus is preventive and structural: building the conditions in which women can be healthy and safe, rather than responding only once harm has occurred. The region is one of the most diverse in Australia, and much of WHISE's work is with and for migrant and refugee women, women seeking asylum, and women in the outer growth corridors — including community consultation in language, partnerships with settlement and multicultural services, and work with health and community sector partners to make services usable for women who are not well served by mainstream design. WHISE contributed to Victoria's Inquiry into Women's Pain, including running consultations across the region, where women repeatedly described their pain and health concerns being dismissed during and after pregnancy. That work informs the position WHISE will put to the Senate Select Committee. As one of twelve Victorian women's health services, WHISE also works as part of a statewide network, and with the Women's Health Services Network nationally, on policy, advocacy and evidence.

Contact details:

Dos Hetherington, WHISE Communications Lead,

[email protected]

0412317334