Reports

This report captures the views of ACT women with disabilities about their health and health needs, access to services, supports and information and barriers to maintaining health.

Our research identified key barriers including affordability, appointment availability and wait times, as well as challenges with transport, caring responsibilities, physical access needs, and the lack of ongoing, affordable options for preventative care and activities.

The report highlights important opportunities to improve systems that are often inaccessible and discriminatory towards women with disabilities.

During 2019 the ACT government made significant changes to the transport system in Canberra to accommodate the tram line from Gungahlin to the city, including the decommissioning of many bus stops. Women’s Health Matters began to hear from women that these changes had affected their feelings of safety. This report summarises our key findings after conducting bus stop audits, including identifying common factors which contributed to women feeling unsafe and more vulnerable at these stops.

Women’s Health Matters and the ACT Council of Social Services (ACTCOSS) produced this analysis of the ACT labour market, looking at future trends with a focus on wages, levels of qualification and growth across major industries. This report continues a gender-based analysis begun in a 2014 ACTCOSS report titled Creating Opportunity or Entrenching Disadvantage? – Labour Market Trends in the ACT, to determine how these conditions effect the work opportunities and incomes earned by women in the ACT.

This report is the fourth in a series that looks at the views and experiences of health and health needs of ACT women, with the aim of improving options and access to services. This study sought the views of same sex attracted ACT women (both cis and trans) on: their health; their health needs; their access to services, supports and information; and the barriers to maintaining their health. The report explores issues such as sexual health, experiences of violence and anti-LGBTIQ behaviour.

This report follows a 2018 Women’s Health Matters report, Hidden disadvantage among women in the ACT, about women in low income households. Our 2018 report found that women are disproportionately represented among those living in the ACT’s lowest income households. This disadvantage is concentrated in geographic areas in the ACT that are smaller than suburb size, and these areas can be masked by high average incomes across whole suburbs. This report highlights these hidden areas of disadvantage in the ACT by focusing on middle income households. The aim of the study is to determine the characteristics of disadvantage in these areas in the hopes of identifying those women and children who are at risk of poverty and homelessness.

This report provides an overview of the findings from Women’s Health Matters research between 1990 and 2018 looking at ACT women’s experiences of accessing health services, what they look for and what they currently value in women’s only health services. We hope this study reinforces the value of women only health services in the ACT.

Urban planning has the potential to encourage or inhibit the social participation of women as it affects the accessibility of services such as health care, education, shopping centres, banks, post offices, and public transport. This report documents the results of data entered in the Women’s Health Matters Safety Mapping Tool from June 2016 to August 2018. It includes findings about where women feel safe or unsafe in public spaces in the ACT, why they feel or unsafe and how gender effects the way individuals use and experience public spaces.