Victorian State Budget: WHISE Strategic Analysis

Addressing Gender Bias and Medical Misogyny: Victoria continues to lead nationally in recognising structural gender inequity in healthcare. The budget maintains sexual and reproductive health investment ($1.7 million) and references the groundbreaking Women's Pain Inquiry - which generated over 13,000 community responses - creating a foundation for implementation. Victoria is positioned to become the first jurisdiction to systematically tackle medical misogyny by building on this public engagement through targeted implementation funding in future budget cycles.

System Integration and Prevention Focus: The budget's $2.83 billion investment in mental health and $175.4 million in community supports creates opportunities for integrating prevention-oriented approaches that align with the Department's structural intervention vision. Victoria's commitment to gender-responsive budgeting ($0.5 million annually) establishes important infrastructure that positions the state to lead in comprehensive, intersectional budget analysis—with potential for strategic scaling to deliver whole-of-system transformation.

Strengthening Evidence and Community Voice: The budget sustains place-based health initiatives, recognizing the value of community partnerships. Enhanced funding stability would strengthen women's health services' capacity to provide the robust evidence base and community voice that the Department values. WHISE's current partnerships with TAFEs and other organisations demonstrate how this collaboration can drive practical gender equity outcomes across multiple systems.

Victoria's recognition of women's health services as valuable partners creates opportunities to enhance this partnership model through strategic investment:

• Respect Victoria continues to guide and support Victoria’s nation leading primary prevention infrastructure, with scope for enhanced long-term planning capacity through extended funding cycles
• Women's health services offer proven models for place-based implementation, ready to scale with secure multi-year funding that matches their demonstrated system value
• Commission for Gender Equality provides established expertise to support organisations continuing to transition to a gender equal workforce (including LHSNs), with potential for enhanced capacity to embed system-wide gender equity approaches

As Victoria transitions to Local Health Service Networks, significant opportunities exist to embed gender equity expertise across major investments:

• $1.97 billion emergency management investment presents an opportunity to pioneer gender-responsive disaster management approaches, integrating well-documented evidence of gendered disaster impacts
• Major workforce development funding ($94.3 million for nursing, $47.1 million for mental health, $67.5 million for teaching) targets feminised sectors, creating opportunities to embed gender-transformative strategies that enhance workforce outcomes and retention
• Infrastructure investments offer potential to establish gender-responsive design standards, creating replicable frameworks for equitable development

Strengthening System Leadership Through Strategic Investment

Victoria's gender equity infrastructure – which includes Women’s Health Services -  presents opportunities for strategic enhancement:

• Sport and recreation gender equity frameworks established proven approaches that could inform broader system strategies—the women's health sector is well-positioned to support this work through existing partnerships with local governments and community organizations
• Women's leadership initiatives created valuable institutional knowledge for scaling gender equity approaches across government priorities
• Prevention investment models since the Royal Commission demonstrate Victoria's capacity to lead in evidence-based prevention frameworks

The 2026-27 budget presents opportunities to amplify investment impact through strategic alignment with proven models:

1. Scale proven models with indexed, multi-year funding that maximises the demonstrated system value women's health services provide; leveraging existing success for greater impact
2. Pioneer comprehensive implementation of Women's Pain Inquiry recommendations with funding that builds on significant community engagement, establishing Victoria as the definitive leader in addressing medical misogyny
3. Lead internationally by strategically scaling gender-responsive budgeting to deliver intersectional analysis that positions Victoria as a global exemplar
4. Model integration excellence by embedding gender equity requirements in LHSN transitions, creating exportable frameworks for system reform
5. Strengthen prevention leadership by building on existing evidence-based programs to expand Victoria's proven prevention infrastructure

Maximising these strategic opportunities builds on the Department's recognition of women's health services as system-shaping partners with proven capabilities:

Proven Implementation Partners: Women's health services possess essential community connections and feminist expertise, ready to deliver sustained system transformation with secure funding that enables long-term planning and partnership development.

Evidence and Innovation Leaders: The network's demonstrated strengths in data collection and evaluation can be enhanced through funding certainty that enables investment in robust evidence systems. WHISE's policy analysis and evidence-based advocacy exemplifies this capacity, ready to scale with adequate support.

System Integration Champions: As our health system (including LHSNs) transitions accelerate, women's health services are positioned to lead system integration with the security that enables effective "leaning in" to system leadership - maximizing the partnership model the Department champions.

Social Determinants Innovators: Women's health services' holistic approach represents proven innovation ready for system-level scaling. Current work building capacity across sectors -from TAFEs to local health networks -demonstrates this innovation in practice.

This partnership model builds on demonstrated success, requiring strategic investment that recognizes women's health services as essential infrastructure for achieving Victoria's gender equity goals.