Healthcare changes will shift the dial for women like me

I was 31 years old when I was diagnosed with a rare kind of brain tumour, the treatment for which has changed my life. A couple of brain surgeries, six weeks of radiation and many medical bills later, I am doing pretty well. Although I remain better acquainted with doctors’ offices and emergency departments than I might like to be.

During treatment, blood supply to my pituitary gland was necessarily restricted. I no longer produce the hormones that other women my age generally do, which means I must replace them synthetically. It was especially eye-opening for me that of all the highly specialised medical care I have received, effective support for hormone replacement was some of the hardest to come by.

Jamila Rizvi with son Rafi on the eve of her craniotomy in September 2018.

But perhaps, that’s finally starting to change – and for the better.

On Sunday, the Albanese government announced more than half-a-billion dollars in new funding for women’s healthcare. New oral contraceptives and hormone replacement drugs will be added to the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme. There will be more generous Medicare rebates for IUDs and other birth-control implants, as well as for menopause health assessments.

There’s even funding for the imagining of a magical future state where UTI medication is available over the counter at the chemist, involving two national trials. You might have imagined that amid a heightened pre-election campaign atmosphere, the opposition would respond in a contrarian way. In defence, perhaps, of cranberry juice manufacturers, now at risk of losing their primary market. But no. The Coalition has endorsed Labor’s policy, agreeing to match its commitment dollar for dollar. Sunday was indeed a rare, good news day for women’s health.

Hidden among the more headline-grabbing items on Labor’s list of announcements is new funding to educate healthcare professionals about menopause and perimenopause and to develop the first-ever national clinical guidelines. This will be welcomed by every woman of a certain age, who has had her pain or emotional distress brushed off by a GP, before being sent away with a script for tranquillisers like benzodiazepine. But it also begs the question of why. Why, when women have been experiencing menopause for millennia, are we only now attempting some degree of medical consistency in its treatment and care?

The answer, of course, is that the history of medicine is riddled with gender bias, and we still have a way to go in eradicating it. Medical studies and clinical trials have traditionally focused on men, whose bodies have been considered the “standard” human form. Women have often been excluded from medical research due to fears that hormonal fluctuations would complicate results.

The remnants of this history remain. Contemporary studies reveal that women’s pain is routinely dismissed by doctors and that it is not taken seriously even in emergency departments. Endometriosis often goes underdiagnosed even though it affects one in nine Australian women, and treatment options for menopause remain limited and poorly understood.

Menstruation, pregnancy, birth and menopause have always been wrapped in layers of shame. I remember being taught to speak about my period in whispers, smuggling tampons into bathrooms like contraband. When loved ones have experienced pregnancy loss, I’ve observed them nursing their sorrow in private because that’s just what you’re supposed to do.

Workplaces rarely consider the impact of severe period pain, perimenopause, or postnatal depression in their policies. Women are expected to endure, adapt and push through, often at great personal and professional cost. Those who do speak up are at risk of becoming a source of collective office eye-rolling, labelled as whingers.

Similarly, women’s health has long been a neglected area of public policy, considered unlikely to deliver the headline-grabbing impact governments are seeking. Sure, every politician likes to don a pink ribbon and enjoy the cricket over summer, while announcing new funding for breast cancer research. But beyond the conversationally acceptable subject of breasts, Australia maintains a deep cultural reluctance to discuss anything further.

This promised investment from Labor is recognition that change is on the way. It may not be revolutionary in the context of our entire struggling health system, but it will be revolutionary for the women accessing these medicines and care. No Australian should have to go without the medicine they need because it was unaffordable, or their doctor didn’t understand.

Women deserve better. We deserve healthcare that is equipped to meet our needs, recognises our pain, and is both accessible and affordable. That this issue is front and centre, on the eve of a federal election campaign, suggests we’re finally making progress towards that goal.

Jamila Rizvi is deputy managing director at Future Women and a published author. She is a former federal Labor ministerial staffer.