Chooseday 16th September, Choose to Balance! ⚖️

Good Morning,

Balance. It’s one of life’s great pursuits.

We balance our calendars between work and rest, our diets between nourishment and enjoyment 🥗, and our minds between focus and calm 🌿. When we strike balance, we thrive—our stress lowers, our creativity soars, our relationships strengthen, and our overall wellbeing improves.

So today, let’s pause and reflect: where could you invite more balance into your life?

Maybe it’s stepping away from screens for an hour, swapping a rushed lunch for a mindful meal, or sharing the load at home.

These small acts of balance add up, creating resilience and harmony in our daily lives.

But balance isn’t just a personal pursuit—it’s a societal one. And there’s one imbalance that still demands our attention: the gap between what men and women are paid.

It’s been called the final frontier of workplace equality, and despite decades of progress, the numbers tell us we’re not there yet.

⚖️ Globally, women earn just 77 cents for every $1 that men earn for work of equal value (United Nations).

⚖️ In Australia, the most recent Workplace Gender Equality Agency data shows women earn, on average, 78 cents for every $1 in total remuneration—a gap of $28,425 per year (ABC News, The Guardian).

⚖️ Even when you strip away bonuses and super, looking only at base salaries, women still earn $242 less each week—that’s nearly $12,600 annually (WGEA).

Why does this imbalance persist?

Part of the answer lies in who holds leadership roles—men are still overrepresented at the top, where pay scales rise sharply.

Part lies in the “care penalty”—women take on a disproportionate share of unpaid caring responsibilities, which can limit career progression.

And part lies in the undervaluation of roles and industries traditionally dominated by women, from education to healthcare, where skills are abundant but pay often lags.

The gap, in short, is not just about numbers—it’s about structures, systems, and long-standing social expectations.

So what can we do?

We can choose to talk about it.

We can choose to advocate for transparent pay reporting and equitable policies.

We can choose to support workplaces that value flexibility, promotion on merit, and shared responsibility for care.

And, importantly, we can choose to empower organisations working to close the gap on a global scale.

This is where the International Women’s Development Agency (IWDA) steps in 💜.

IWDA works across Asia and the Pacific to advance gender equality through advocacy, research, and partnerships. Their mission is bold but beautifully simple: a world where women, girls, and gender-diverse people have equal access to resources, representation, and rights.

As International Equal Pay Day approaches on Thursday, 18 September, let’s Choose to Balance—a commitment to both work-life harmony and equality in pay.

Let's see balance not just as a personal goal, but as a societal one.

Together, we can support IWDA, raise awareness, and take action to tip the scales toward fairness. Because balance, after all, is not something we wait for—it’s something we create ⚖️.

Cheering you on from the sidelines,

The GoodCompany Team

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