Joanne Wainer

Since 1995 she has worked to include gender issues on the medical curriculum and improve health services in rural areas. Born in 1946, Jo Wainer completed a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) at the University of Melbourne in 1968. While still a student Jo became a foundation Secretary of the Abortion Law Reform Association. Involved in the campaign to decriminalise abortion, she met and married Dr. Bertram Wainer and together they fought a dangerous battle to expose the abortion rackets being run by corrupt detectives in the Victorian Police Force.

In 1986 Bertram Wainer died and Jo, a widow at 40, supported their family by being a farmer of wool, mohair and cashmere. In 1990 Jo Wainer established and managed until 1994 a multi-disciplinary women's health clinic. By 1994, the clinic employed 24 staff and serviced 5,000 patients a year.

As a journalist for the ABC she attended the 1994 United Nations International Conference on Population and Development. In 1995 working for several weeks in New York as a consultant on gender issues to the UN Secretary General of the 4th World Conference on Women she attended the Beijing conference attached to the Secretary General's staff and represented Australian non-government women's health organisations. In 1995, Jo took up a Research Fellowship at the Monash University School of Rural Health and in 1996 became a Senior Lecturer in the School. She completed several research projects on medical service delivery in rural areas and women rural doctors and introduced a new curriculum unit "Women in Rural General Practice".

She is currently Convenor of the Gender Working Party of the Five Year Curriculum Committee of the Faculty of Medicine, Nursing and Health Sciences and was Convenor of the gender session of the World Organisation of Family Doctors 5th World Rural Health Congress. In 1996 Jo was the NonGovernment Representative in the Australian delegation to the UN Commission on the Status of Women.

Jo Wainer has described herself as a feminist, "...as a woman who has spent much of her adult life honouring the feminine and working to make a space so that women's voice can be heard and women's experience incorporated into the public domain''.