Rights. Justice. Action - and the everyday bravery women deserve from us all

I often think back to where my journey began: a young woman, first in my family to step into higher education, I don’t know why, but I just knew that it would open my world and take me places I could only imagine. Education has opened possibilities I didn’t know existed. But stepping through new doors also meant stepping into environments where the playing field wasn’t level.

As we mark International Women’s Day 2026, anchored in the UN Women Australia theme Balance the Scales, I’m struck by how timely and confronting it is. It pulls us away from feel‑good symbolism and into the realm of responsibility: What are we actually willing to change to ensureevery woman and girl is safe, heard and free to shape their own lives?

The global picture makes the urgency impossible to ignore. Women currently hold only 64 per cent of the legal rights afforded to men and, at the present rate, UN Women predict it could take nearly three centuries to close those gaps. These are not abstract figures; they represent decisions made in legislatures, parliaments, and courtrooms that shape the everyday lives of women worldwide.

Having lived the transformative power of education, I feel strongly that access alone is not enough. Opportunity must be matched by conditions that allow women to flourish. And for far too many women, the deck is stacked long before they ever reach a classroom or a workplace. Justice, if it is to mean anything, must be universal, not selective.

But the barriers that hold women back are not always written into law. More often, they live in smaller, quieter moments; the idea that’s dismissed until repeated by someone else; the way women still must justify ambition in ways men simply do not; and the habit of attributing women’s success to luck rather than skill.

These behaviours may be subtle, but they shape lives. And they persist because we’ve normalised them.

This is where I return to two values that have shaped my own path: kindness and courage.

Kindness is more powerful than people realise. It softens rooms that feel intimidating. It opens space for those who hesitate to speak. Kindness doesn’t fix everything, but it creates the conditions where people can breathe and contribute.

Yet kindness without courage can become avoidance.

Courage is the necessary counterpart. Courage means refusing to let dismissive jokes slide. It means speaking up when someone talks over a colleague. It means questioning decisions that subtly reinforce exclusion. It means helping rewrite norms that have long been assumed. It means backing women not only in public celebrations, but in private moments when they risk being sidelined.

The 2026 theme asks precisely this of us: to push beyond gestures and into real action and to balance the scales. The United Nations has made clear that dismantling discriminatory laws, addressing biased systems, and challenging harmful norms are essential steps toward meaningful equality. But systems don’t shift unless people do.

As someone who has benefitted from education, mentorship, and the generosity of people who believed in me before I believed in myself, I feel a responsibility to pay that forward. For me, that means asking: What am I doing, right now, to make things better for women and girls who come after me?

And more importantly: What can we do together?

Change will not arrive fully formed. It begins with practical, everyday decisions. Practically it means, opening the door for someone else, amplifying a voice that is ignored, challenging processes that inadvertently exclude, and modelling the culture we want to see.

We don’t need to wait 286 years for justice to catch up. We can accelerate it in workplaces, in communities, in schools, in boardrooms through countless small acts of bravery, honesty, and generosity.

This International Women’s Day, my hope is simple: That we match our kindness with courage. That we notice what we have overlooked. That we call out what we once tolerated. And that we step deliberately into the kind of action that brings rights and justice within reach for every woman and girl.

The future won’t build itself. We have to shape it, together.

Professor Belinda Tynan
Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic

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