The numbers tell a confronting story. When over 1,300 women across the Australian Capital Territory share their health experiences, patterns emerge that demand attention. The 2025 Survey of Women’s Health in the ACT reveals a healthcare landscape where one in three women rate their health as fair or poor, nearly half feel dismissed by doctors, and accessing basic care remains frustratingly difficult despite living in Australia’s capital.
The Access Crisis Hidden in Plain Sight
While the ACT boasts some of Australia’s highest healthcare spending per capita, only 27% of women who saw a GP in the past year were able to use bulk-billing services. This isn’t just about choice—it’s about availability. Even among those who successfully accessed bulk-billed appointments, 60% rated the availability of these services as only fair or poor.
The reality for many women is stark. Among those who couldn’t access their GP easily, 86% cited difficulty getting appointments as the primary barrier, while 66% identified cost as a major factor. One survey respondent captured the dilemma perfectly: “I put off going to the Dr because I can’t afford it. I probably only go once a year even though there’s many things I’d like more support on from a Dr including mental health, weight loss support, fertility treatments and help with my arthritis issues.”
The situation becomes more complex for the 6% of respondents without Medicare. Among this group, 22% had neither Medicare nor private health insurance, leaving them entirely exposed to healthcare costs. International students and temporary visa holders described flying home for treatment rather than navigating Australia’s expensive private system—a damning indictment of our supposedly world-class healthcare.
When Being Heard Becomes a Battle
Perhaps no finding is more troubling than this: 45% of women felt doctors took them only somewhat seriously or not at all seriously when explaining symptoms or health concerns. This represents a significant increase from 35% just two years ago, suggesting the problem is worsening, not improving.
Nearly 16% experienced discrimination in healthcare settings within the past year. The primary factors? Gender (57%), age (41%), weight (37%), and disability (32%). Women described bringing husbands to appointments to be taken seriously, being told their life-threatening conditions were just weight issues, and having debilitating symptoms dismissed as “mental health issues” or “sensitivity.”
This dismissal has real consequences. Over a third of women only go to the doctor if there’s no other option, while 32% actively avoid seeing doctors whenever possible. When seeking help becomes an ordeal of justification and advocacy, many simply stop trying.
Mental Health: The Silent Emergency
The mental health statistics paint a picture of widespread distress that our current system is failing to address. Using the validated Kessler Psychological Distress scale, 20% of respondents showed indicators of probable serious mental illness—nearly three times higher than general population surveys suggest.
Only one-third of women reported never having been diagnosed or treated for a mental health condition. Anxiety affected 46% of respondents, depression 42%, and PTSD 13%. Yet despite this enormous need, only 27% had consulted any mental health professional in the past year.
The gap between need and service is particularly acute for new mothers. Among women who gave birth in the ACT in the past two years, 31% were treated for or diagnosed with perinatal depression or anxiety. The support systems for these vulnerable women remain inadequate, with many describing feeling abandoned after birth once immediate medical needs were met.
Reproductive Health: Progress and Persistent Gaps
The survey reveals both advances and ongoing challenges in reproductive healthcare. On the positive side, the ACT shows higher rates of long-acting reversible contraception (LARC) use compared to national averages, and recent initiatives have made abortion services free for ACT residents.
However, satisfaction with reproductive healthcare remains concerningly low. Half of all women with endometriosis or adenomyosis were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with their healthcare for these conditions. Similarly, 49% of women with PCOS reported dissatisfaction with their care.
For the 17% of women experiencing persistent pelvic pain, 55% of those who sought treatment were dissatisfied or very dissatisfied with the care received. Perhaps most tellingly, 63% of women with persistent pelvic pain had missed work or study due to their condition—representing 11% of all survey respondents whose productivity and participation are compromised by inadequately managed pain.
Women’s stories reveal systemic failures: emergency departments that “laugh at” endometriosis patients in severe pain, specialists who refuse hysterectomies to women “too young” at 32, and GPs who won’t refer patients for specialist care despite debilitating symptoms. One woman summarized the exhausting reality: “It’s too hard to get a diagnosis for endo or PCOS. I have been to 3 different GPs and none want to refer me to a specialist… I have given up on a diagnosis and just get on with the pain.”
Birth and Trauma: An Unacceptable Normal
Among women who had given birth in the ACT in the past two years, 48% experienced at least one form of birth trauma, including emergency caesareans, prolonged labour, emotional distress during delivery, or babies requiring intensive care. Looking more broadly, 55% of all women who had ever given birth reported experiencing some form of birth trauma.
While satisfaction with maternity care was generally high for recent births, the prevalence of traumatic experiences reveals a system where distress and emergency have become normalized. Women described not having names for their trauma until years later, highlighting how the medical system often fails to acknowledge or address the psychological impacts of difficult births.
Violence: The Hidden Health Crisis
The survey’s findings on violence reveal an epidemic hiding in plain sight. Only 45% of respondents had never experienced any of the survey’s listed forms of violence. Breaking this down: 39% had experienced sexual violence in their lifetime, 40% had experienced workplace sexual harassment, 30% had experienced family violence, and 27% had experienced domestic violence.
These experiences profoundly impact health and healthcare access. Women who had experienced sexual violence rated their GP access more poorly than those who hadn’t, suggesting violence creates additional barriers to care. The intersection with disability is particularly concerning—21% of women with disability had experienced violence from someone they lived with or relied on, compared to just 8% of women without disability.
The Innovation Imperative
These findings demand more than incremental improvements. They require fundamental reimagining of how healthcare serves women. June Health and similar initiatives show what’s possible when we prioritize accessibility, remove gatekeepers, and trust women to know their own bodies. Their at-home testing models, telehealth consultations, and judgment-free approach address many of the barriers identified in this survey.
The data supports several urgent priorities:
Immediate actions needed:
- Dramatically expand bulk-billing availability, particularly for women’s health services
- Implement mandatory training on gender bias and women’s health conditions for all medical professionals
- Establish specialised women’s pain clinics with multidisciplinary teams
- Create clear, funded pathways for endometriosis, PCOS, and persistent pelvic pain diagnosis and treatment
Systemic changes required:
- Integrate mental health screening and support into all women’s health services
- Develop trauma-informed maternity care standards with psychological support embedded
- Fund comprehensive reproductive health leave provisions
- Ensure all temporary residents can access affordable healthcare
Beyond Statistics: A Call for Change
This survey represents 1,319 women who took time to share their experiences, hoping their voices might drive change. Their message is clear: the current system is failing too many, too often. When nearly half of women feel dismissed by doctors, when basic care is unaffordable or unavailable, when reproductive health conditions take years to diagnose while destroying quality of life—we face not isolated incidents but systemic dysfunction.
The path forward requires acknowledging uncomfortable truths. Medical misogyny isn’t an historical artifact but a current reality shaping women’s health outcomes today. The “good” overall satisfaction scores hide profound inequities affecting women with disabilities, from migrant backgrounds, experiencing violence, or simply trying to have their pain believed.
Change demands more than policy tweaks. It requires cultural transformation in how medicine views and values women’s experiences. It means funding services that centre women’s needs rather than forcing women to fit institutional convenience. It means believing women the first time, not after years of suffering proves they weren’t exaggerating.
The 2025 Survey of Women’s Health in the ACT provides the evidence. The question now is whether our health system—and our society—has the courage to act on it. Women’s health is not a specialty issue or a sidebar to “real” medicine. It is fundamental to the wellbeing of our entire community. The women who shared their stories deserve nothing less than a healthcare system that sees them, believes them, and serves them with the excellence they have every right to expect.
