Women in Business Webinar: Empower Her – How Support Changes Everything

Mandatory Targets Loom

Australia's corporate gender landscape faces a regulatory shift that will soon make setting gender equality targets compulsory rather than voluntary for large employers. From April 2026, companies with 500 or more employees must commit to three specific targets under amendments to the Workplace Gender Equality Act and demonstrate measurable progress within three years.

This change arrives amid uneven progress. Recent data shows women hold nearly 40% of key management positions, yet only one in four organisations reports gender-balanced leadership teams. Female CEOs remain rare at 10% across the ASX 300, and 18 companies have no women in executive roles at all. A quarter of ASX 300 firms saw women's representation decline in 2025, signalling stagnation or backsliding despite earlier gains.

The stakes extend beyond compliance. Organisations with balanced leadership outperform peers in profitability, resilience, and value creation, according to analyses linking gender equity actions to lower turnover and stronger performance. Women-led businesses reinvest more in communities and drive broader economic impact, but funding access for female founders shows inconsistent progress masked by occasional headline rebounds.

Non-obvious tensions include the gap between board-level advances—approaching parity in some cases—and blockages in executive pipelines. Accountability remains weak, with only 44% of ASX 300 companies setting gender balance targets before the mandate. Smaller businesses and startups face different pressures, where support networks like mentoring or access to capital prove critical but unevenly available. The upcoming requirements force a reckoning: symbolic efforts will no longer suffice when regulators demand evidence of change.