At 17, I was told I would likely never have children.
At 39, I had what can only be described as a miracle baby.
Today I am a very grateful single mum.
That journey may mean I carry bias. But it is bias forged through both absence and abundance. I have lived on both sides of the motherhood equation. I know what it is to sit outside it. I know what it is to finally be inside it. And that is precisely why this matters to me.
For most of my corporate career, I was not a mother.
And in subtle, persistent ways, that made me feel like I was failing at something I couldn’t name.
I wasn’t one of the big male power leaders. I didn’t resemble the historic template of authority. I didn’t inherit the unconscious credibility that still walks into rooms ahead of certain men.
But I also wasn’t part of the (rightly so) celebrated cohort of working mums.
So, on International Women’s Day, I often felt like I existed in a strange void.
Every year, corporate Australia rolls out the same playbook.
A panel. A purple cupcake. A LinkedIn tile about “supporting working mums”. Somewhere in the press release, a proud mention of maternity leave.
Let me be clear, paid parental leave is critical. It is economic infrastructure. It supports families, productivity and national prosperity. It should be strong and defended. If you are not a woman, you are almost certainly the son of one.
But when maternity leave becomes the headline act of your International Women’s Day strategy, you are telling a very narrow story about what women are for.
For women who desperately want children and cannot have them, that message lands like poking a bruise.
For women navigating IVF between meetings, or returning after miscarriage, it can feel like a public celebration of something intensely private and painful.
For women who choose not to have children, it feels like quiet disqualification.
And for women who are mothers, it reduces a complex professional identity to a single biological chapter.
Women are not a 12 month leave window.
We are decades of ambition, illness, leadership, negotiation, reinvention and care. Sometimes that care is for children. Sometimes it is for ageing parents. Sometimes it is for ourselves.
If International Women’s Day is going to mean anything, it has to confront the full architecture of how women experience work.
Start with safety.
In Australia, one woman is killed every week by a current or former partner. Rates of domestic and family violence have surged in recent years. Many women experiencing violence are in the workforce. Work is often their only financial independence.
Domestic violence leave should be baseline. But leave alone is not enough. Organisations should offer confidential pathways to support, trained internal advocates and access to counselling without requiring disclosure to a direct manager if that feels unsafe.
Safety is not a lifestyle perk. It is a workplace issue.
Then there is sexual harassment.
The advertising and media industry has had its own reckoning. Public investigations and industry surveys have made it clear that power imbalances have too often been exploited.
Client dinners that cross lines. Senior leaders who blur boundaries. Careers quietly reshaped because someone chose silence over risking their career.
International Women’s Day cannot coexist with cultures that tolerate that behaviour.
Independent reporting channels. Transparent consequences. Bystander training that goes beyond compliance. These are table stakes.
Then look at money and power.
Women are often over-mentored and under-sponsored.
The gender pay gap in Australia remains stubborn, even in industries that pride themselves on progressive values. Publish salary bands. Make promotion criteria explicit.
Audit who owns revenue, who holds P&L responsibility, who negotiates the big deals. Hire someone other than your mates.
And yes, continue to strengthen parental leave. Expand it. Fund it. Normalise men taking it.
But stop presenting it as the singular proof that you support women.
A friend told me recently that on a construction site she had to submit a special request for a sanitary bin in the women’s bathroom. A special request. For a period.
That is how deeply male the default still is. Women are accommodated. Not assumed.
International Women’s Day should not be a polite nod to mothers. It should be a reckoning with the defaults.
Have we built workplaces where women who never have children can thrive without penalty?
Have we built workplaces where women navigating violence, illness or loss are supported without stigma?
Have we built industries where harassment is genuinely intolerable?
Have we built promotion pathways that distribute power, not just praise?
Reducing women to biological function (albeit an amazing one) is convenient.
It is convenient to celebrate us when we are pregnant and sideline us when we are ambitious.
Convenient to fund maternity leave but ignore menopause.
Convenient to post about empowerment while tolerating harassment.
Convenient to run panels while quietly managing “complex” women out.
Convenient to pretend the only way to support women is to plan for their absence.
Women are not just biology. We are not a leave liability to be forecast or a diversity metric to be quoted.
Equality is not about celebrating women when it suits the narrative. It’s about designing systems that don’t need a narrative to justify our presence.
Venessa Hunt is the CEO of Fixer & Future.
