IWD 2026: Women's Mental Health at Work and What It Really Takes to Balance the Scales
Some patterns in workplaces are easy to measure. Running training organisations and working closely with workplaces across Australia gives you a clear view of how people are really coping.
One pattern stands out again and again: women are carrying enormous loads at work. Not just the work itself, but the invisible weight around it. The emotional labour. The second-guessing. The quiet exhaustion that builds when you feel like you’re giving everything and still not being valued equally. This International Women’s Day, with the theme Balance the Scales, I want to talk about something that sits at the heart of workplace safety and rarely gets the attention it deserves.
Women’s mental health at work.
This isn’t a women’s issue. It’s a workplace issue, a leadership issue, and a human issue. I see it from both sides: as a woman who has built businesses, and as a nurse and trainer who has spent decades teaching people to spot when someone needs help.
What Does "Balance the Scales" Actually Mean at Work?
UN Women Australia chose this year’s theme to shine a light on the need for fairness, safety, and equal access for women and girls. What I like about the framing is that it moves the question from “what’s wrong with women?” to “what’s wrong with our systems?” That is exactly where the conversation needs to sit.
In a workplace, balancing the scales means women have the same access to opportunity as men. It means their contributions are recognised fairly. It means they can work free from harassment and discrimination. It means they feel safe enough to speak up without worrying about being punished for it.
These aren’t grand ideals. They’re practical, they’re measurable, and right now, we’re still falling short on most of them.
The good news? These barriers were built by people. Which means people can take them apart. That’s the part I want to focus on.
The Pay Gap Isn't Just About Money
When people talk about the gender pay gap in Australia, the conversation usually stays at the level of dollars and cents. But there’s a deeper cost that often gets missed.
The latest figures from the Workplace Gender Equality Agency show that, on average, women in the private sector earn about 79 cents for every dollar men earn when you count total pay, including super, bonuses, and overtime. Over a year, that gap adds up to more than $28,000. The ABS base salary figure is smaller at 11.5%, but the broader WGEA measure gives us a fuller picture of what women actually take home compared to men.
The direction is right. More than half of Australian employers reduced their pay gap in the latest reporting round, and every state and territory showed improvement. That matters. It’s real progress driven by real effort.
But here’s what I notice as someone with a clinical background. Being consistently paid less than the person next to you doesn’t just shrink your bank balance. It chips away at your sense of belonging. It affects your confidence. It creates a low-level hum of stress that sits underneath everything else you’re dealing with at work.
The pay gap isn’t just unfair. It’s a risk to women’s mental health. And in the world of workplace safety, risks are things we’re supposed to be finding and fixing.
The Glass Ceiling Has Moved, but It Hasn't Gone
Women now hold over half of Australian Government board roles and about a third of private sector board positions. That’s worth celebrating. But only 22% of CEOs are women, and the pay gap at the top remains steep. The problem isn’t getting in. It’s getting ahead.
Here’s something I’ve seen play out over years of working with people in training rooms. When women don’t see leaders who look like them, it quietly erodes confidence. It sends an unspoken message that there’s a limit to how far they can go. The women who do make it to senior roles often carry an extra load on top of their actual job: the expectation to be the face of diversity, the mentor, the role model, all while delivering the same results as everyone else. That pressure is a straight line to burnout.
In sectors like health care, aged care, education, and community services, the workforce is overwhelmingly female. These industries do some of the most important work in the country. They are also among the most undervalued, and that’s not a coincidence. Balancing the scales has to include properly valuing the work that women have always done, not just opening doors to roles that have traditionally been held by men.
Burnout Hits Women Harder
I want to be straight about this. Research consistently shows women burn out at higher rates than men. Recent global figures put it at 59% of women compared to 46% of men. That gap isn’t random. It reflects the weight of juggling structural inequality, caring responsibilities, emotional labour, and day-to-day workplace friction.
The Australian numbers tell a similar story. Mental health compensation claims hit 17,600 in 2023-24. That’s 12% of all serious workers’ compensation claims, and it represents a 161% increase over the past decade. Safe Work Australia’s data shows that mental health conditions make up 17.2% of all serious claims for women, compared to 8.2% for men. Women aren’t just more likely to experience work-related mental health issues. When they do, they tend to be off work longer. The support systems aren’t keeping up.
What’s behind it? The causes stack on top of each other. Heavy workloads with little recognition. Limited say over how, when, and where work gets done. Not feeling safe enough to raise concerns or push back. The invisible load of being the person who remembers, plans, and anticipates while also doing their actual job. And the “second shift” at home, where Australian women do, on average, 32 hours of unpaid care and domestic work each week. That’s nine hours more than men.
For women in health care, education, and social services, the pressure builds further through chronic understaffing, high emotional demands, and a long history of these industries being funded as though the work doesn’t really count.
Burnout doesn’t arrive all at once. It builds through small moments. Being talked over. Being passed over. Being expected to prove yourself just a little bit more than the person beside you. For many women, the moment they realise they’re burning out is the moment they’re already running on empty. That’s too late. And it’s preventable.
Workplace Discrimination: The Quiet Toll
[Infographic] IWD 2026: Balancing the Scales of Australian Women's Mental Health
Some forms of workplace discrimination are obvious. Unequal pay. Being overlooked for promotion. Being penalised for having children. Others are harder to name but just as damaging. Being interrupted in meetings. Watching your idea get credited to someone else. Fielding comments that seem small on their own but wear you down over time.
For women from marginalised communities, these experiences compound. First Nations women, women of colour, women with disabilities face layered barriers that can’t be addressed with a one-size-fits-all approach. WGEA data shows First Nations women face a pay gap of 23.7% compared to non-Indigenous women, on top of broader racial and cultural inequities. Balancing the scales means seeing these intersecting experiences clearly and responding to them specifically.
The mental health impact of ongoing discrimination is well-established. When someone is consistently treated unfairly, it activates the body’s stress response. Over time, that contributes to anxiety, depression, and physical health problems. Women who experience sustained discrimination at work report higher levels of distress, lower satisfaction, and are more likely to disengage or leave altogether. That’s not just a personal loss. It’s a massive loss of talent and experience for every organisation that fails to act.
One number that should concern every board in Australia: while 99% of employers have a sexual harassment policy, only 60% had it reviewed by the board. One in four boards received no information at all about how common sexual harassment actually is in their organisation. A policy that nobody checks on isn’t protection. It’s just a document.
Psychological Safety: Why It Matters More Than Almost Anything Else
I talk about psychological safety constantly in our mental health training, because it’s the single biggest factor in whether people will ask for help early. And early help is, hands down, the most effective way to manage mental health challenges at work.
But for many women, psychological safety isn’t something they can count on. When a woman doesn’t feel safe to raise a concern about discrimination, workload, or her own mental health, she won’t put her hand up until things have gone much further than they needed to.
Building real psychological safety takes more than an open-door policy. It takes leaders who are willing to show their own vulnerability. Who take concerns seriously rather than brushing them off. Who understands that telling someone to “just speak up” ignores the reality of how power works in most workplaces.
It also means women seeing themselves reflected in leadership. It means their experiences are being taken seriously rather than explained away. It means workplace policies being designed around real lives, not around the assumption that every worker has no responsibilities outside the office.
When women feel safe, they perform better, stay longer, and give more. The business reasons line up with the ethical ones. It’s simply the right way to run a workplace.
What Employers Can Do Right Now
I’m a practical person. I believe in turning awareness into action. Here’s what I’d encourage every employer reading this to think about.
Close the pay gap with intention. Run annual pay audits. Be transparent about the results. Standardise how you make promotion decisions. The data exists. Use it.
Build psychological safety from the top. Train your leaders in mental health literacy. Back the people who raise concerns. Create genuine space for honest conversations, not just the appearance of one.
Catch burnout before it catches your people. Pay attention to workloads with the same care you give to budgets. Offer flexibility that’s real, not just a line in a policy document. Make it normal for people to take time for their mental health without having to justify it.
Invest in training that goes beyond paperwork. Mental health literacy has to move from a document on the intranet to a lived skill in every team. When your managers and team leaders can spot the early signs, respond with care, and connect people with the right support, you change outcomes. Not just for women, but for everyone.
Listen to women from diverse backgrounds. The experiences of First Nations women, women of colour, and women with disabilities aren’t side notes to the gender equity conversation. They’re essential to it. Make sure your strategies are shaped by diverse voices and that your support systems are built to be genuinely inclusive.
Two Things Can Be True at Once
It would be easy, looking at all these numbers, to feel overwhelmed. The challenges are real and they’re significant. But this International Women’s Day, I want to sit with two truths at the same time.
The scales are not yet balanced. And they are more balanced than they were.
More employers are doing pay gap reviews. More men are taking primary carer’s leave. More women are on boards. More organisations are treating mental health at work as a genuine priority. Each of these shifts means real change in the lives of real women. The work isn’t done. But the work is working.
To every woman reading this: your mental health matters. Your wellbeing matters. The weight you carry, the parts people see and the parts they don’t, all of it matters. You deserve a workplace that sees you fully, supports you properly, and values what you bring.
To everyone else: This is your invitation to help build it.
References
IWD 2026 –
https://www.wgea.gov.au/Data-Explorer
WGEA Gender Equality Scorecard – https://www.wgea.gov.au/publications/australias-gender-equality-scorecard
WGEA Calculate Gender Pay Gap – https://www.wgea.gov.au/pay-and-gender/how-to-calculate-gender-pay-gap
Work Australia Psychosocial Hazards Code of Practice – https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/model-code-practice-managing-psychosocial-hazards-work
Australian Human Rights Commission Respect@Work – https://humanrights.gov.au/our-work/campaigns/sex-and-gender-rights/respect@work
