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The name MCWH: signposting major developments in our organisation’s story
Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH) has gone through many name changes during its 30-year history, each one a major sign post in its development.
In 1978 MCWH began as Action for Family Planning (AFP) a migrant women’s organisation which grew from the realisation and activism of the late 1970s
that acknowledged that in order for family planning education and information to reach migrant women, it had to be taken from the clinical context
and into the community. By the early 1980s, 1982 to be exact, AFP became Women in Industry Contraception and Health (WICH), and then in the early 1990s,
this changed to the broader Women in Industry and Community Health (WICH). Both these names, with their unique acronym, reflected the organisation’s steady
movement beyond family planning toward a feminist perspective and a wider women’s health focus. At the end of the 1990s WICH became Working Women’s Health
(WWH) which recognised immigrant and refugee women’s work, both paid and unpaid, and the vital contribution this work makes to both women’s communities
and wider Australian society.
Thirty years later, AFP has evolved into the Multicultural Centre for Women’s Health (MCWH), an organisation rich in history, action,
and meaning for immigrant and refugee women’s health.
A brief timeline of MCWH
| 1977 |
Pilot factory visiting program providing multilingual family planning education to immigrant women factory workers begins in 1977. |
| 1980's |
Over the next fifteen years the program receives funding to expand, with a broader focus on women's reproductive, sexual, occupational, and mental health education delivered in community and workplace settings. |
| 1990's |
Throughout the 1990s, the program becomes a service named Women in Industry and Community Health (WICH), and later, Working Women's Health (WWH), emphasising the agency's continuing unique expertise in women's workplace health education. |
| 2006 + |
By 2006, WWH further expands its breadth of health promotion activities and becomes the Multicultural Centre for Women's Health, reflecting the organisation's multifaceted and comprehensive approach to immigrant women's health. |
Please click here for an extended overview of MCWH’s 30 years of Putting Immigrant and Refugee Women’s Health First,
this is taken from the 2007-2008 Annual Report, please see Annual Reports for a complete copy. |
