Recent laws require Australia’s big employers to set gender equality targets, but these high-achieving women say more is needed to achieve real progress
When cyber security expert Vian Khamis led the launch of a new live banking system for the Commonwealth Bank in 2007 while managing a delivery team of 140, she was heavily pregnant.
"I made a joke out of it," she says. "I’d say things like, ‘Do I look like I can wait?’"
Nearly two decades later, she led a similar high-stakes build, a new live banking system for the Bank of Sydney. Yet while she was working on that project, when she was at a Zumba class, a stranger who heard she had been away working on "big projects" asked her, "Oh, are you a nurse?"
It made her realise that discrimination still exists.
"There’s that unconscious bias of what kind of role, as a woman, you would have," says Ms Khamis, who has led major technology transformations across banking and telecommunications and now works in cyber security role at UNSW.
This small moment captures some of the reality in Australian workplaces in 2026: while women have made considerable gains in leadership, there is still much work that needs to be done.
A new accountability rule
In March 2025, federal legislation was passed that requires all businesses with 500 or more employees to commit to at least three binding gender equality targets.
These targets could range from flexible work, pay equity and senior representation. And for the first time, employers’ progress will be available publicly.
There is genuine momentum behind this reform. In 2025, women’s participation in the paid workforce reached a record 63 per cent And, according to the government’s 2026 Status of Women Report Card, women hold more than 49 per cent of seats in the current federal Parliament.
But the route to senior leadership in corporate Australia tells a more complicated story. As of June 2026, according to the Board Diversity report, women only hold 38 per cent of ASX 200 board seats.
According to Chief Executive Women 2026, no ASX 300 company in the utilities sector has a female chief executive. And only 4 per cent of chief executives in the materials and resources industries are women.
And according to Workplace Gender Equality Agency, while there has been some progress, the national gender pay gap has remained at more than 21 per cent.
What bias looks like now
For Ms Khamis, the numbers reflect a familiar workplace reality. Entering steering committees as the senior person in the room, she says she was repeatedly asked, "Can you take the minutes?"
She says she had to fight for an executive assistant that male colleagues at her level were given automatically.
And she says some of the sharpest resistance came from other women.
"My actual female bosses and colleagues seemed to discriminate the most, which is really interesting. They projected their own insecurities and their own unconscious bias," Ms Khamis says.
Recently she left a cybersecurity transformation role she loved where she felt she was unfairly treated.
"No one, either male or female, should take on ridiculous hours and more than what they’re paid for," she says.
Dr Tatiana Pentes, who has led digital communications across the arts, screen and local government sectors, has seen attitudes shift throughout her career.
There were some dark moments early on. For example, more than a decade ago, when she was developing a degree program for a private sound engineering provider, she was met with open hostility.
"It was like, ‘Wait a minute, you’re a woman, what are you doing in sound engineering?’" she says.
Some of it was more pointed. Colleagues nicknamed her "the intelligent gypsy" and questioned her choice of clothing, she says. During one class, a student asked her in front of the group, "How can anyone learn anything from you or listen to anything you’re saying? Look at you, how can they concentrate enough to actually learn?"
"I became very angry, and I wanted to prove myself," she says.
She says gender equality is firmly in place at her current employer. "We don’t talk about numbers," Dr Pentes says. "It’s more, ‘This is the way we are.’"
Last year the government introduced superannuation payments for those claiming government-funded paid parental leave. And in July 2026, this paid parental leave was expanded to six months.
Dr Pentes’ own children are grown, so this won’t affect her directly. But the move made her think about the superannuation she can now access.
"It’s given me a buffer I hadn’t really thought about," she says. "What the government is doing is putting plans in place, a safety net."
It is the kind of structural change she wishes had existed earlier, when she chose to put her own career second to her husband’s while raising her family.
"I look at my peers who stayed in their careers, and they’re CEOs now," she says. "My career was always secondary to his."
Dr Tanya Phillips, a vet and the founder of pet care brand Best Fur Forward, runs her business from her dining table while raising two children.
She made a similar career trade-off as she balanced her workload and childcare. It’s something that’s required negotiation with her husband.
Her husband, who is nine years older than her, was raised in a traditional household where his mother did not work outside the home.
And Dr Phillips says that expectation has taken years to shift. "It’s a constant work in progress, you’re always training your partner," she says.
Unlike Ms Khamis and Dr Pentes, Dr Phillips says she has not personally experienced workplace discrimination in veterinary practice, an industry that is now around 70 per cent female.
"I don’t think I’ve ever felt inferior to upper management or male colleagues I’ve worked with," she says. But juggling her responsibilities has come at a cost.
"I’ve sacrificed my whole career. I chose jobs and hours that would only work for me being the primary carer. But now that role has reversed, and I’m happy with it," she says.
Still work to be done
These women's careers show that there's been progress. Barriers that were once left unquestioned are visible, named and increasingly regulated against.
But boardrooms remain short of parity, some industries do not have a single female chief executive, and many households still rely on one partner to carry more of the caring load.
Dr Pentes, for her part, expects the next shift to be linguistic as much as legal. "We’re going to stop using the words ‘maternity leave’ and move to ‘parental leave’," she says.
For Dr Phillips, progress looks like being able to hold several roles at once, rather than choosing between them.
"I actually feel more empowered as a leader, having taken on so many different roles," she says, "mentoring new grads, I’m currently mentoring a final year Vet student, and being a parent."
And for Ms Khamis, the progress is worth celebrating, but it is not yet near the finish line. "The wheel of life has to lead your life," she says. "Family comes first, always."
