This 2008-09 project will strengthen women’s voices and representation in existing national and academic and health networks so that the contributions of women can be fully realised and their skills fittingly applied in meeting the medical education and healthcare needs of the Australian community.

This will be achieved by:

- Delivering leadership skills training to female health professionals.
- Promoting leadership discussions and leadership activities among women doctors.
- Providing increased opportunities for medical women in rural and remote areas to attend and participate in the Medical Women's International Association Western Pacific Congress ("the Congress") in Melbourne in October 2008
- Building an internet based leadership skills portal at the AFMW website accessible to all Australian women, with training material directed at enhancing leadership abilities and confidence in undertaking leadership positions.
- Developing a medical leadership skills database that will allow AFMW to access and provide specialist medical expertise to increase its advisory capacity to inform and drive health policy development and service delivery.
- Enabling effective communication between medical women at a state and national level enabling national debate on policy and service delivery issues.
- Enhancing health service delivery through increased capacity of female health professionals to represent the views of their communities and contribute to the development of public policy and service delivery.
- Enhancing health service delivery through increased capacity of the AFMW to represent members’ views and contribute to the development of public policy and service delivery.
- Encouraging enhanced participation of rural and remote female doctors within AFMW and the health arena resulting in greater social inclusion and reduced professional isolation.
- Delivering website content management training to female health professionals using the award winning Joomla! system to provide technical skills that are readily transferable to other internet based projects and applications.
- Delivering electronic newsletter production skills to female health professionals.
- Developing an integrated AFMW website with regularly updated content from all active member states. This will allow the activities and achievements of medical women to be promoted online and encourage women to become active in their state and national medical women’s organisations.
- Developing enhanced communication between the AFMW and its members and stakeholders in the form of a quarterly electronic newsletter.

The website you are looking at is part of this project - we hope you find its resources useful and look forward to your feedback and providing you with ongoing improvements.  The first AFMW electronic newsletter is planned to go out in January 2009. Join our mailing list to make sure you receive the inaugural newsletter! If you would like to get involved in this project please contact AFMW.

The Australian Federation of Medical Women Bridging Leadership Barriers Project has been funded by the Australian Government through the Women's Leadership and Development Programme. The AFMW gratefully acknowledges this support.

A presentation outlining this project was delivered at the Medical Women's International Association Western Pacific Regional Congress on October 17, 2008. Click here to view this presentation.