Women’s Health In the North (WHIN) has developed a two-pronged program of work challenging violence against women in Melbourne’s Northern metropolitan region, including:
Coordination of a region-wide strategy to prevent all forms of male violence against women and children; and
A lead role in the Northern Integrated Family Violence Services team, which implements the Victorian Government’s family violence reforms.
Our work focuses on two areas of sexual and reproductive rights: improving the health and wellbeing of women and girls from communities within which the practice of Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) is known to occur; and working in collaboration with high schools to help students understand and explore issues of sexuality and diversity.
Women’s economic participation is a crucial ingredient in the recipe for both mental and physical health, which is why economic participation for women is a priority area of our work.
It is widely accepted that for women engaged in paid work, the majority experience greater financial security, independence and improved mental and physical health. However, paid labour force participation is not exclusively an indicator of good health – policies, conditions, hours worked and pay rates can all have a negative effect on health, particularly for women in some of Women’s Health In the North’s (WHIN’s) key target groups: women with low socio-economic status, culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women and young women.
WHIN’s 2008 research into factors of economic participation affecting women’s health and wellbeing resulted in a resource of four fact sheets addressing the issues of women and consumption, women and work and women and climate change. WHIN also continues to advocate widely for policies and programs that will increase women’s positive economic participation.
Women’s Health In the North (WHIN) agrees with the world’s leading scientists that climate change is one of the most pressing and urgent issues of the 21st century. Women are particularly susceptible to climate change and climate change-induced disaster owing to factors including gendered roles, and unequal access to wealth, power and privilege.
Environmental Justice is a priority area for our work, and we are focusing on:
Producing evidence, research and resources which demonstrate the relationship between women’s health and wellbeing and climate change;
Advocating for organisations and government to specifically consider women’s health and wellbeing when planning and responding to climate change;
Increasing women’s knowledge of and capacity to respond to the impacts of climate change on women’s health and wellbeing; and
Being a strong public voice on women and climate change.
In this section of our website, Women's Health In the North and Women's Health Golburn North East collaboratively:
pose questions and challenges
invite your comment, your art, your poetry
proclaim women's experiences
expound our research and our stance
What do we mean by 'Environmental Justice'?
• The term 'Environmental Justice' refers to the just distribution of environmental risk and benefits amongst the population and the right of all to meaningful participation in environmental decision-making. (http://www.epa.gov/environmentaljustice/)
• Women are greatly under-represented in environmental decision making, and the perspective women can bring to such processes is under-recognised and under-utilised.
• We agree with the world's leading scientists that climate change is one of the most urgent issues of the 21st century. Women may be particularly susceptible to climate change and disasters, yet a gendered perspective is largely absent from environmental research, policy, planning and implementation.
• The environmental justice model offers a useful framework for the identification and reduction of environmental risk to women and men, as it offers access to a body of knowledge established over decades.
A Numbers Game: Lack of gendered data impedes prevention of disaster-related family violence
The Health Promotion Journal of Australia will publish in its forthcoming edition, an article co-written by staff at Women's Health In the North and Women's Health Goulburn North East.
'A Numbers Game' addresses the lack of a systematic approach to collecting family violence data after Black Saturday. Its premise is that health promotion theory and service planning demand a sound evidence base for interventions. In the absence of this, family violence following disasters will continue to be overlooked in the face of 'urgent' needs.
Women and Environmental Justice: a literature review
The Environmental Justice movement works for the fair distribution of the burdens brought by climate change. Its focus is mainly on race and socioeconomic class, yet we believe that a gendered analysis of environmental issues is central to achieving justice. This gendered focus will ensure that women and girls are not disproportionately affected by the effects of devastating environmental problems such as climate change and that any needs they have that are different to those of men will be adequately addressed. Importantly, women must be involved at all levels of addressing environmental issues, including climate-change induced disasters.
In order to ascertain the effects that climate change and other environmental issues are having on women and girls in Melbourne's northern region, this wide-ranging literature review addresses a number of topics that relate to women and environmental justice, including economic participation; vulnerability to natural disasters and heatwaves; mental health; rural women; the elderly, children and disabled; and leadership.
Our research has shown that women are unduly affected by environmental problems for three main reasons: because they are generally poorer than men, because of the social construction of womanhood and because of their longer life spans. The interaction of these factors with forms of discrimination such as sexism, racism and ageism result in social conditions that put women at risk of environmental injustice.
Now take the to test your knowledge...
Women and Environmental Justice: the presentation
See an ouline presentation of the literature review.
On Black Saturday many women were left alone, often with children, to escape or fight the sudden fires. Some made the decision to leave early and returned to a community changed physically and emotionally forever. Read the stories of 21 women in Beating the Flames.
The accounts of how women responded and were affected during and after the Black Saturday fires cast light on a complex and heartbreaking time. Lives changed and the aftermath continues to be felt in families and communities devastated by fire. We invite you to share your story. Submit your story of Black Saturday or the days, weeks and even years that followed.
Black Saturday Art:
Visual art has been a way to express both the horror and grief of Black Saturday and the cautious joy in survival and renewal.
Black Saturday Poetry:
Poems from Black Saturday capture the essence of events and raw emotions. Add your poem to this website. You can also read what others have posted.
Submit your story, art or poem
We invite you to share your story, art and poetry.
Submit your story of Black Saturday or the days, weeks and even years that followed. Submit your images of art you have created around the events of Black Saturday. Submit your poems that capture the essence the events of Black Saturday.
This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it
*Please Note Stories, Art and Poems submitted will be posted to this website
It appears that the collective imagination that women and children come first in a disaster is a myth... Read the international literature review Gender and Disaster.
Does Violence against Women Increase after a Disaster?
The landscape of my soul:Relationships after Black Saturday
Two years of collecting and analysing accounts from women and workers affected by Black Saturday has yielded complex and disturbing findings. Social services workers - including police, domestic violence workers, counsellors and recovery workers - shared their knowledge and insight into the effect of the disaster on personal and community relationships. Women themselves have spoken of their experiences of post-bushfire violence.
A striking feature of this research is what is missing. No sound data collection existed to identify and record incidents of family violence, and women's traditional reluctance to report violence against them was exacerbated in the atftermath of Black Saturday. Retracted accounts of violence and responses to it indicate that much remains hidden, as women continue to fear repercussions from both the community and violent partners.
This report is forthcoming.
Background:
In disasters and their aftermath, women are affected differently and in many cases more severely than men. Increased violence against women is a documented characteristic of the post-disaster period. Where researchers have noted this link, they have attributed the increase to heightened stress, alcohol abuse and lapses in constraints to behaviour offered by legal and societal expectations.
Although Australians have a one in six estimated lifetime exposure to natural disaster, there appears to be little research into the gendered impacts of disaster and no published research to date on the link between disaster and violence against women in this country. It seems that the long-standing taboo in relation to domestic violence is taken to a new level where perpetrators may have been 'heroes' in the fires, where stress levels are high and where men are often unemployed and sometimes suicidal. The ever-present willingness to overlook violence against women appears to be exacerbated in post-disaster circumstances where the resources of support services are over-burdened with primary and fire-related needs.
Other Campaigns & Policy
Influencing Government
An important part of our work involves bringing together and collaborating with individual women and women's services in Melbourne's Northern metropolitan region and across the state in calling for local Councils and the Victorian State Government to make women's health a priority. Our recent advocacy work is two-fold:
What We Do
Women’s Health In the North (WHIN) agrees with the world’s leading scientists that climate change is one of the most pressing and urgent issues of the 21st century. Women are particularly susceptible to climate change and climate change-induced disaster owing to factors including gendered roles, and unequal access to wealth, power and privilege.
On Black Saturday many women were left alone, often with children, to escape or fight the sudden fires. Some made the decision to leave early and returned to a community changed physically and emotionally forever. Read the stories of 21 women in 
Two years of collecting and analysing accounts from women and workers affected by Black Saturday has yielded complex and disturbing findings. Social services workers - including police, domestic violence workers, counsellors and recovery workers - shared their knowledge and insight into the effect of the disaster on personal and community relationships. Women themselves have spoken of their experiences of post-bushfire violence.