International Women’s Day offers an important opportunity to both celebrate progress and reflect honestly on the work that remains. 

At Monash, this annual moment is part of a longstanding commitment to gender equity and inclusion, one that has seen meaningful change over time, while continuing to invite thoughtful conversation about how equity is experienced in everyday academic and professional life. 

This year’s theme, “Balancing the Scales”, encourages us to look beyond representation and symbolic milestones, and to consider more deeply the systems that shape whose work is valued, whose voices are amplified and how success is defined.

Recalibrating the structures

For Associate Professor Pearl Subban, balancing the scales is not about women doing more to succeed within structures that were never designed with them in mind. 

Rather, it’s about recalibrating those structures so that different forms of contribution are recognised and rewarded. 

Across workplaces, disparities are not only evident in who holds leadership roles, but in which types of work and responsibilities are given visibility and recognition. 

Care, service, emotional labour and relational work – often disproportionately carried by women – can remain undervalued, while linear career trajectories, uninterrupted productivity and self-promotion continue to be privileged. 

Addressing this requires not only recognition, but intentional structural change.

This experience is further shaped by intersectionality. 

Shaping the culture

Professor Rashina Hoda reflects that gender never operates in isolation. Women’s professional successes are influenced by age, race, ethnicity, faith, socioeconomic background and caring responsibilities, each of which can subtly, or overtly, affect how authority and expertise are perceived. 

These dynamics surface in everyday moments – when a woman’s knowledge is questioned, when a woman of colour is assumed to be a student rather than a colleague, or when microaggressions are framed as neutral feedback. 

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Individually, such moments may seem minor; collectively, they shape cultures of belonging and exclusion.

At the same time, the metaphor of “balancing the scales” invites us to think carefully about what balance actually entails. 

Rather than simply redistributing opportunity within existing structures, contributors encourage a broader conversation about how those structures themselves are designed. 

True balance requires rethinking

Professor Nicoleta Maynard suggests that adjusting who is in the room is only part of the work if the room itself remains unchanged. True balance, she argues, requires rethinking what is valued, so that empathy, collaboration, and quieter forms of leadership are embedded structurally, not merely accommodated. 

Gender is one important axis of equity, but without attending to culture, neurodiversity and background, our understanding of balance remains incomplete.

The influence of entrenched hierachies

From a medical research and healthcare perspective, Carol Hodgson highlights how entrenched hierarchies may shape opportunity, influence and recognition across disciplines and career stages. 

Gender disparities in authorship, funding and leadership may persist, alongside limited pathways for early-career researchers and siloed approaches to collaboration. 

Yet the evidence is compelling. Diverse, multidisciplinary teams ask broader questions, design more representative studies, and generate findings that translate more effectively into practice. 

In this context, equity isn’t only a matter of fairness, it’s central to research excellence and improved patient outcomes.

Change must leave no-one behind

As Director of Staff Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, Dr Lucie Joschko reflects on the momentum Monash has built over the past decade, including stronger representation of women in senior roles, improved workplace flexibility and more equitable decision-making processes. 

At the same time, she acknowledges progress is experienced unevenly. Inclusive practices can still be misunderstood and women at the intersections – women of colour, women with disabilities, caregivers and part-time staff – continue to encounter systemic and cultural barriers. 

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Applying an intersectional lens, she notes, is not about fast fixes or token changes, but about ensuring change is both intentional and transformative, leaving no-one behind.

Across these reflections, there’s shared recognition of the progress that’s been made, alongside an understanding that awareness alone is no longer the primary challenge. 

Changing the everyday experience

Professor Maynard points to institutional inertia – the tendency for systems to absorb change without fundamentally shifting. 

Workshops are delivered, policies developed and commitments articulated, yet the everyday experience of being in the organisation may remain unchanged. 

This doesn’t diminish the value of these efforts; rather, it highlights the importance of ensuring that change is sustained, lived and reinforced through culture and practice.

Read more: Spotlight on women of colour in academia at Monash University

These insights point to a shared understanding. Meaningful, scaled change cannot rest on individual goodwill alone. It requires embedding equity into institutional design – through transparent promotion processes, workload models that value care and service, leadership cultures that share power and accountability structures that support collective responsibility. 

Crucially, it also involves engaging those who benefit most from existing systems as active participants in shaping change, so that inclusion becomes part of how the institution functions every day.

Balancing the scales, then, is not about asking women to carry more. It’s about thoughtfully redesigning the system itself, so that all staff, across genders, backgrounds and identities, have the opportunity not only to participate, but to belong, contribute and thrive within the Monash community.