Women’s Mental Health in Australia: Data, Policy, and the Liptember Legacy

When a man launches a women’s mental health fundraiser and accidentally builds Australia’s leading organisation for women’s mental health, something in the system is clearly broken and ready for change. This episode is a front-row seat to that transformation.

In this episode of Femtech at Work, we sit down with Luke Morris, founder and CEO of Women’s Mental Health Australia (formerly the Liptember Foundation), to unpack how a quirky fundraising idea turned into a national movement reshaping women’s mental health across the lifespan.

You’ll hear how mental health systems were historically built on male data, and how Women’s Mental Health Australia is closing the gap by connecting women’s physical and mental health—from PMDD and PCOS to perinatal mental health and menopause.

If you care about women’s health, gender equity, or simply want to understand how one idea can shift a national conversation, this episode will challenge, inspire, and move you to action.

Key Takeaways:

• Find out how a casual fundraising idea based on lipstick evolved into Australia’s leading women’s mental health organisation
• Discover why a male founder chose women’s mental health as his life’s work and what this says about true male allyship
• How mental health systems built on male physiology and data have failed women in both research and clinical practice
• Understand how conditions like PMDD and PCOS dramatically increase women’s mental health burden and why they’re so often overlooked
• Discover how gender-disaggregated data is rewriting the story of women’s mental health in Australia
• Find out how a long-term partnership with Chemist Warehouse became the catalyst that took Liptember from a small fundraiser to a national force
• Learn how Women’s Mental Health Australia uses annual research to decide where every donated dollar can have the most impact
• Understand why geography, city vs regional and remote, still shapes access to quality mental health care for women
• Discover how new programs like the Working Mothers initiative aim to support women navigating the return to work after childbirth

Resources:

Luke Morris: LinkedIn

Women’s Mental Health Australia: LinkedIn

Women’s Mental Health Australia: https://www.womensmentalhealthaustralia.org.au/

Maaike Steinebach LinkedIn

Website Femtech Future: https://www.femtechfuture.com

Instagram Femtech Future: @femtech_future

This episode with Luke Morris is more than a story about a charity. It's a blueprint for how courage, data, and relentless advocacy can reshape an entire system for women.

If this conversation opened your eyes to how deeply the system has failed women, don’t let it stop at awareness. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it, and become part of the movement that’s rewriting the story of women’s mental health. Let's keep amplifying voices that move women’s health forward.

Thank you, and see you next week for another powerful episode of Femtech at Work.