Real change begins when we listen to the voices that have too often been ignored.”
— Dr Jackie Huggins AM
Throughout March, organisations across Australia will mark International Women’s Day (officially 8 March), aligning to the UN Women theme Balance the Scales. It’s a powerful theme because it acknowledges two things at once: the progress we have made - and the imbalance that still shapes too many careers.
International Women’s Day has always been both a celebration and a reckoning. A moment to recognise progress, but also to confront the reality that equality has never arrived by accident. Every shift - from workplace safety to parental leave to protections against harassment - has come because women spoke up, often at personal cost, and because leaders chose to act.
And in contemplating this year’s theme, I’ve found myself reflecting on a simple exercise we run with women and employee networks called Career Snakes & Ladders™. It’s a deceptively simple metaphor, but a powerful way to make invisible systems visible. Participants map the moments that shaped their careers - the opportunities that accelerated their progress and the obstacles that held them back. When the board fills with lived experience, patterns - indeed the system of work itself - emerge quickly.
The ladders are familiar: a sponsor advocating for someone’s promotion, a manager staying in touch during parental leave, flexible work that allows someone to contribute fully without stepping away from their career path. Sponsorship, stretch opportunities and leaders willing to invest in talent all help people climb.
But the snakes tell another story.
Women describe returning from parental leave to find their role permanently reassigned, being told promotion is unlikely while working part-time, or being expected to take on administrative or non-promotable work because flexibility is required. Others describe more overt sexism - being interrupted in meetings, someone else claiming their idea, being overlooked for high-profile assignments and not receiving a bonus because they're going on parental leave, or having to change jobs because of sexual harassment.
These moments rarely become formal complaints.
Yet over time they shape careers, confidence and leadership pipelines. The exercise reveals something important: snakes and ladders are not random. They are the system. They show us where opportunity expands and where it quietly narrows.
When we step back from the board another pattern becomes visible: the snakes compound when diversity intersects.
For migrant and refugee women navigating unfamiliar professional systems. For First Nations women confronting cultural and historical barriers. For women with disability navigating workplaces not designed with them in mind. For women from working-class backgrounds without inherited networks or cultural capital. These layers matter because behind every statistic we publish about inequality sits a lived experience.
It is so important to remember that behind the gender pay gap is someone being told their salary won't be increased because they work part time. Behind leadership gaps is someone whose promotion slowed because their manager made an assumption about their ambition after they returned from parental leave. Behind statistics about harassment or discrimination is someone deciding whether speaking up will protect their dignity or harm their career.
Data sharpens insight and strengthens accountability. But lived experience often reveals the system first.
International Women’s Day is also a moment to acknowledge the progress that has been made. More women are stepping into executive roles. Boards are more balanced. Paid parental leave access has expanded and return-to-work rates are stronger than a decade ago. Conversations about flexibility, care and leadership have shifted in ways that would have been difficult to imagine even five years ago.
But progress does not mean parity.
This week WGEA released updated gender pay gap data showing that more than half of Australian employers still have a pay gap larger than 11.2% in favour of men. Men remain nearly twice as likely to hold the highest-paid roles, and discretionary payments such as performance bonuses and overtime continue to widen those gaps.
The question for 2026 is no longer awareness. It is accountability.
Many organisations are now investing significant effort in understanding their workforce data. With the introduction of WGEA gender equality targets, leaders are analysing representation pipelines, promotion velocity and parental leave outcomes with new levels of rigour. Increasingly, they are overlaying this data with insights from coaching programs and focus groups to understand the lived experience behind the numbers.
One pattern that consistently emerges is what Avivah Wittenberg-Cox describes as the Gender Jaws. Women enter organisations in strong numbers, but as careers progress their representation narrows while men’s expands.
The jaws open - and they tell a story.
A story not just about women, but about how power is distributed, how care is valued, and who gets to lead. This is why I often say to leaders: the law and the data show you where to focus, but the stories of lived experience show you where to act.
When we look at workforce data through that lens, we begin to see much more than numbers: we see where discrimination is occurring - not just in outcomes, but in the systems that shape opportunity.
We see where the risks of sexual harassment are concentrated - often in environments with strong power imbalances or significant gender pay gaps.
We see where policies are working - and where they are not.
And most importantly, we see where organisations can intervene with systemic and behavioural controls.
A major driver sits in mid-career, particularly around parental leave. Many organisations assumed that introducing paid parental leave would largely solve the working-mother challenge. And in many ways it has increased women’s workforce participation significantly.
But policy alone does not shift the structural dynamics shaping career and care.
In Australia the average age of a first-time mother is around 30, while the average age of a first-time father is closer to 34. In heterosexual couples that gap often means men are further progressed in their careers when children arrive. When families decide who scales back work to manage care, they are responding to their current financial position rather than the long-term potential of both careers.
That decision makes short term sense for families. But without intentional workplace design it can quietly compound the Gender Jaws inside organisations and unintentionally extend the Motherhood Penalty unnecessarily.
Which is why parental leave transitions remain one of the most important control points in gender equality work.
Balancing the scales is not only about metrics. It is about agency - the confidence to influence your path, the safety to raise concerns and the ability to ask for flexibility without penalty.
When people feel agency they expand. They contribute, innovate and lead. When agency erodes people second-guess themselves, disengage or quietly exit.
Sometimes the most powerful response when someone shares their experience is simply:
“I believe you.”
Because belief restores dignity - and dignity restores agency.
If Balance the Scales is to mean anything this International Women’s Day, the conversation must continue to evolve - from celebrating representation to understanding progression, and from tracking headcount to redesigning the systems that shape opportunity.
Gender inequity is not peripheral. It is an early signal of workforce health, performance and reputational risk.
Leading with grace means asking the hard questions early and standing up for fairness even when it is inconvenient. Grace allows us to examine systems without defensiveness - but grace must be paired with discipline and accountability.
Because equity without accountability is aspiration. And aspiration without architecture does not shift outcomes.
So as we mark International Women’s Day this year, let's celebrate the ladders we have built - and keep building more while we remove the snakes to balance the scales.
With grace,
Prue 💜
Published 8 March 2026