Women’s Health in the South East (WHISE) today thanks Premier Jacinta Allan for her tireless work, her leadership, and her steadfast commitment to the health, dignity and equality of women across Victoria.
Announcing her resignation this morning, the Premier spoke of the things that have mattered most across her leadership, and she finished with women’s health. Drawing on her own lived experience of endometriosis, of pain, and of the risks she carried to her own health, she framed why the Inquiry into Women’s Pain mattered so much. She was one of the women who was dismissed. She was taught to doubt her own pain. And she used the platform she had to make sure other women would be believed.
“Jacinta Allan did something that changes a system. She brought her own body, her own pain and her own experience into the room, and she refused to let it be dismissed,” said Kit McMahon, CEO of WHISE.
“That is what solidarity looks like. She stood with the women of Victoria, with their health, their work, their families and their lives, and she insisted that women deserve to be listened to, believed and treated with respect.”
WHISE saw that commitment first-hand. As part of the work for the Inquiry into Women’s Pain, the Premier attended two of the forums WHISE held with local leaders and women across our region on women’s pain and wellbeing. What WHISE and the women in those rooms valued most was not that she came. It was how she was once she arrived. She sat with the women. She gave her time. She listened deeply, and she met what she heard with real empathy.
“The women in those forums have not forgotten it, and neither have we,” Ms McMahon said.
“She didn’t perform listening. She did it. She sat with women in their pain and their strength, and she made them feel that what they carried mattered. That is rare, and it is exactly the kind of leadership women’s health needs.”
Victoria’s landmark Inquiry into Women’s Pain heard from more than 13,000 women and girls and named what women have always known: that the gender pain gap is real, that medical bias and dismissal are widespread, and that the system has to do better. That work sits within a nation-leading women’s health investment that has expanded services, set new standards of care, and put women’s pain on the record as a policy question rather than a private burden.
“Investment like this doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because someone decides women’s health is not optional,” Ms McMahon said.
“The program of support this government has built gives organisations like ours, and the women we work alongside every day, a foundation to keep building on. We intend to hold that ground and grow it.”
In her remarks this morning, the Premier also spoke directly to the girls, young women and women who are weighing up a future in politics, and her message to them was not to give up. WHISE stands behind that message.
“Like Jacinta Allan speaking to women and girls this morning, WHISE believes the role of women in leadership, and of equitable, diverse leadership, is vital. It is how the needs of community are represented and centred at the highest levels of decision making, and how that translates through policy and funding back to community,” Ms McMahon said.
“This is an ongoing project. But we know at WHISE that lived experience, the lived experience shared by Jacinta Allan and other women in cabinet, has been vital to the investment in and the centring of women’s wellbeing and health.”
WHISE’s hope is that whoever leads Victoria from here reflects and holds that same vision, so that women’s health and wellbeing stay at the centre of government rather than at its edges.
“Leadership changes, but the responsibility to women does not,” Ms McMahon said.
“Our hope is simple. We hope that whoever leads this state carries forward the vision Jacinta Allan held: that women’s health, safety and dignity are core business for any Victorian government, and that women will always be listened to, believed and respected.”
WHISE thanks the Premier for her service to Victoria and wishes her well.
