Last month, some of Australia's most influential leaders gathered at The Glasshouse in Melbourne for our 2025 Leadership Summit. Under the theme "Tomorrow Needs Everyone," we asked a question that cuts to the heart of every challenge facing Australia: who gets to design the solutions to the forces reshaping our world?
The answer that emerged across every conversation wasn't just about inclusion. It was about power. About whether women will be at the centre of designing our future or relegated to managing its consequences.
We're living in a moment of profound contradiction. Australia has just achieved its highest-ever global ranking for gender equality, 13th in the world. Recent transformational policy reforms, spearheaded by Minister Katy Gallagher and a ministry that is now over 57% women, expanded paid parental leave with superannuation, universal early childhood education, and wage increases for feminised industries, demonstrate what becomes possible when women hold real power.
Yet as our recent CEW Senior Executive Census showed, the picture isn’t so bright in corporate Australia. Seventeen ASX 300 companies still operate without a single woman in their executive leadership. Progress towards gender balance in corporate Australia has effectively stalled, and this is happening against a backdrop of a concerning global rollback of diversity initiatives. At our current pace, gender balance in corporate leadership remains decades away. And the systems being built right now, the AI algorithms, the workplace structures, the economic frameworks, are being designed predominantly by men.
Throughout the day, this question surfaced again and again. In Parliament, where Kylea Tink and Zoe Daniel showed us what happens when community-backed women disrupt the status quo. Dismissed as "prefects," they became the force that enabled critical legislation on single-parent payments, childcare reform, and wage equality to pass. Their challenge to us? We shouldn't aim for 50% women in leadership. We need 75% to create the critical mass for lasting transformation.
In sport, where Cate Campbell OAM, Moya Dodd, and Kim Brennan, in conversation with John Wylie, demonstrated how changing who gets to tell the story changes the story itself. The packed stadiums for women's football, the prime-time coverage of women's cricket: these aren't just wins for sport. They're rewiring what Australian children believe is possible about who belongs in positions of excellence and leadership.
In First Nations leadership, where Jayde Ward, Kate Russell, and Tanya Hosch, in conversation with Nareen Young, reminded us that 40,000 years of matriarchal leadership has lessons for corporate Australia about prosperity through connection rather than extraction. They challenged us to look beyond identified positions, tokenistic representation and recognise First Nations women as the leaders they are, across every domain.
And most urgently, in the technologies and systems shaping our future. Dr Catriona Wallace laid bare what happens when women aren't in the room: AI systems trained on biased data that literally code women's experiences out of our future. Recruitment algorithms that filter us out. Voice recognition that doesn't recognise women's voices. The technology panel with Mani Thiru, Dr Larry Marshall, and Dr Kellie Nuttall, moderated by Cheryl Hayman, reinforced this reality: the teams building the technologies of tomorrow are overwhelmingly male and as such are entirely unrepresentative of the perspectives of over half of humanity.
Our climate panel with Sarah Barker, Ella Simons, and Vanessa Zimmerman, moderated by Terence Jeyaretnam, delivered the same message: women bear the heaviest burden of climate disasters globally, yet remain underrepresented in climate decision-making. You cannot solve a crisis using only half of human intelligence and experience. Yet sadly, that continues to be the case.
The panel also reminded us that it is crucial to have intergenerational dialogue. As leaders, we must listen to young people who will live with the impacts of the climate decisions we make today. Their perspectives aren't just important, they're essential to building solutions that will deliver better outcomes for everyone.
The Executive Edge panel with Caroline Cox, Swati Dave, and Kate Russell, moderated by Kerri Burgess, demonstrated that change is absolutely achievable. These leaders shared concrete insights on how they improved gender diversity in senior leadership within the organisations they lead. Their experiences underscored a key finding from our Census: in companies with women at the helm, gender diversity improves throughout the leadership ranks. Their message was clear: true leadership isn't about celebrating the exceptional few who break through existing systems. It's about building systems that enable all women to succeed. When leaders commit to this approach, they don't just change individual careers, they transform entire organisations, and in doing so can change the trajectory of gender equality in corporate Australia.
This is the shift our Summit demanded: from women adapting to existing systems, to women redesigning those systems entirely. When women lead in AI, climate, politics, and business, they don't just manage what exists. They redesign what's possible.
Minister Gallagher's keynote crystallised why this matters economically. With Australia facing productivity challenges and skills shortages, the underutilisation of women’s talents isn't just unfair, it's economic negligence. Companies with women CEOs deliver 5% higher market value. Achieving gender equality could add $128 billion to our GDP.
The Minister's integration of the Women and Finance portfolios sends a powerful signal: gender equality isn't a social add-on to economic policy: it's central to Australia's prosperity.
The conversations that started at the Summit must continue. There are concrete ways to channel this energy:
Minister Gallagher's outline of the Government's comprehensive approach to embedding gender equality across policy areas provides a framework we can all engage with. You can review the full National Strategy to Achieve Gender Equality at https://genderequality.gov.au/ to understand how these initiatives might intersect with your organisation's priorities.
Jayde Ward's powerful insights on redesigning systems for true inclusion remind us that diversity without systemic change is insufficient. Her perspectives on power, leadership and moving beyond simply adding First Nations voices to existing frameworks are explored further in this excellent piece from The Indigenous Business Review: https://theibr.com.au/20-10-2025/20814/not-just-adding-black-to-a-white-feminist-agenda-jayde-ward-on-power-leadership-and-redesigning-systems-for-true-inclusion
Kylea Tink reminded us that Australia remains one of the few developed nations without a Human Rights Act, and her work to change this continues through the Human Rights Law Centre's campaign at https://www.hrlc.org.au/projects/human-rights-act/
Ella Simmons showed us that sustainable change requires intergenerational dialogue. The Future Council is actively seeking organisations to host youth forums at https://futurecouncil.global/contact or support their work at https://futurecouncil.global/donate
Our discussions about sport highlighted the power of visible role models in driving cultural change. Supporting women's sport can help create the visibility that shifts perceptions and inspires the next generation. Explore how your organisation can champion women's sport in Australia: https://www.womensportaustralia.com.au/
The AI conversations made clear that women's leadership in this space cannot be optional. Dr Catriona Wallace continues to work with organisations developing their AI action plans, and you can connect with her at https://drcatrionawallace.com/contact/
Additionally, the Government's development of a National AI Capability Plan would greatly benefit from women leaders' perspectives. Share your insights at https://www.industry.gov.au/news/developing-national-ai-capability-plan or contact AICapabilityPlan@industry.gov.au directly.
Zoe Daniel continues to articulate the challenges and opportunities facing Australia through her regular column in The Guardian at https://www.theguardian.com/profile/zoe-daniel, providing ongoing analysis of the issues we explored together.
Thank you to every speaker who challenged our thinking, every attendee who engaged so thoughtfully, every sponsor who made this possible, and every CEW member who continues to drive change.
The Summit may be over, but our work must continue.
Helen Conway
President
CEW
ENDS
About CEW
Since 1985, Chief Executive Women (CEW) has influenced and engaged all levels of Australian business and government to remove the barriers to women’s progression and ensure equal opportunity for prosperity.
CEW’s 1,400 members represent Australia’s most senior and distinguished leaders across the country’s largest private and public organisations, collectively overseeing over 1.3 million employees and $749 billion in revenue.
Through research, advocacy, leadership programs and scholarships, CEW works to realise its purpose of ‘women leaders empowering all women’ and the vision of a community where women and men have equal economic and social choices and responsibilities.