On the one hand, motherhood may seem like one of the most natural things in the world. On the other, it all seems like hard work when the popular benchmarks for motherhood success are ‘yummy mummies’, backyard blitz homes and…
Submission to the Victorian Family and Community Development Committee Public Inquiry into Perinatal Services
This submission has been developed by the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH), the national voice for immigrant and refugee women’s health and wellbeing. The term ‘immigrant and refugee’ refers to people who have migrated from overseas, and their children.…
Achieving reproductive justice: a case of intersectional thinking
The concept of choice, like the language of human rights, is essentially a good thing. Having choices (or rights) implies that you also have the freedom and ability to act on every option (or right) available to you. However, when…
The path towards excellent sexual and reproductive health
It’s sometimes said that the best laid plans can often go wrong but more optimistically, a plan is often a map that marks out where we have come from and where it is we need to go. How we travel along the…
The Transformative Power of Data
For the majority of teens living in high-income countries ‘data’ is generally associated with mobile phone plans. However, for many more young girls and women living in lower resourced countries around the world, data could literally mean the difference between…
Weighing up the costs of migration
Government policy about migration generally focuses on meeting the social and economic needs of the country. Sadly, it’s rarely about the humanitarian (or even just plain old human) aspect or the ways migrants can be supported to help achieve the…
The WRAP #45- Early bird, leadership and recognition and 60 Seconds with Carmel Guerra
As the days get longer, brighter and warmer we look forward to saying goodbye to winter and welcoming spring. Spring is all about rejuvenation, renewal and new life and for any new life to blossom, there needs to be the…
The early bird
It’s difficult to make an argument against timely antenatal care. All the available research indicates that timely antenatal care leads to better health for mothers, fewer interventions in late pregnancy and positive child health outcomes. In the case of pregnancy…
The more things change
Much has changed since the immediate post war period when Australia first opened its doors to a mass migration program. However, there is much that remains the same. The policy imperative to ‘populate or perish’ established a still-relevant practice of…
International students’ rights: it’s time for change
It’s a little known fact but an important one: there are more people arriving into Australia as temporary migrants than there are recently arrived permanent migrants. As of December 2015 there were over 1 million people living in Australia on…