1. Background and mission

The Women’s Health Center was founded in 1993 by a group of female students and physicians. Since then, we have called attention to a diverse range of pressing women’s health issues, especially those ignored or under-attended by health care providers and politics.  In addition, we identify problems of over-treatment and inadequate treatment in women´s health care. Our mission as a nonprofit and non-governmental organization is oriented towards public health, civil society services and democratic politics. We are politically and denominationally independent.

International declarations and health reports of the World Health Organization (WHO) reinforce our work, such as the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion 1986, the Madrid Statement - Mainstreaming Gender Equity in Health, 2001 and the Report on Health and Women, 2009.

The Women’s Health Center is part of the international women’s health movement, born out of the feminism's second wave in the late 1960s in the USA.

For more than 30 years, the women's health movement has sought to change the way women and their bodies are viewed, and to empower women to be actively involved in their health care. Many women's health needs are different from those of men. Pregnancy and childbirth, menstruation, menopause are examples of health issues which are specific to women.[1] Other health issues like heart attacks differ in symptoms, diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation between women and men.
Social determinants specifically influence the health of women. 

The Women’s Health Center is a member of the Austrian Network of Women’s Health Centers (Netzwerk der Österreichischen Frauengesundheits­zentren) to further reinforce women specific health care on the regional and national level.

Our mission is to empower women and girls in all stages of life and within the range of women’s health needs to allow for self-determination enabling women and girls to strengthen their health as experts for themselves and in their communities (individual level).

We put health on the political agenda through advocacy, education and lobbying for adequate health structures for women and girls and equal participation of women and men within health care and society (structural and political level).