Date: Friday 6th March 2026

Time: 12:00pm AEST

Bin the Breakfast and Bring on the Brunch for IWD 2026

Deanna Grant-Smith (Professor of Management, University of the Sunshine Coast) and Sarah Casey (President, AWGSA)

Each year in early March, organisations across Australia mark International Women’s Day with networking breakfasts, keynote speakers, and panel discussions. In 2026, UN Women Australia has set the theme Balance the Scales, calling for fairer systems that address gender inequality. Yet there is an irony embedded in the way many of these celebrations are organised. The ubiquitous 7am International Women’s Day breakfast may be well-intentioned, but it often reinforces the very inequalities the day seeks to challenge.

Decades of research demonstrate that women continue to perform the majority of unpaid care work alongside paid employment. In Australia, women undertake significantly more unpaid domestic labour and childcare than men, even in dual-earner households. These responsibilities shape how women structure their daily routines. The complex logistical choreography involved in balancing work, caregiving, and commuting is described as trip chaining where a single journey links multiple tasks such as school drop-offs, grocery shopping, and transport to work. Combined with persistent time poverty, these patterns make early-morning professional events particularly difficult to attend.

The timing of many International Women’s Day breakfasts clashes directly with this reality. Events frequently begin early, and with commute time included, often before many childcare centres or before school care programs open, and well before the typical start of the workday. For women with caring responsibilities, attending can require significant logistical juggling and sometimes extra costs associated with arranging early childcare, negotiating partner schedules, paying for additional babysitting, or rushing through an already compressed morning routine. For some, participation becomes impossible; for others, it becomes another hidden cost of professional engagement. These early morning starts can exclude participation in important informal networking opportunities in much the same way that the expectation to engage in after-work drinks or poker nights once did.

This is not a trivial organisational detail. The scheduling of workplace events, including those run by professional organisations, reflects broader institutional assumptions about whose time is flexible and whose labour is invisible. When recognition events are structured around early-morning networking, they implicitly privilege workers who are less constrained by caregiving responsibilities, which are still disproportionately men. Ironically, the very events intended to celebrate women’s achievements can inadvertently exclude many women from the room.

Starting later offers a straightforward alternative by better aligning with school hours and the opening times of childcare services. It also reduces the need for additional paid care and minimises disruptions to family routines. Importantly, it also broadens accessibility for those balancing multiple roles across work, caregiving, and community commitments.

Rethinking timing is a start, but so is rethinking format. Online events offer another meaningful alternative, removing the barriers of commute, location, and physical presence altogether. A lunchtime session accessible from home or a work desk can open participation to those for whom even a later in-person event remains out of reach. AWGSA’s 2026 IWD event – a free online lunchtime gathering called No Panel, No Pressure, No Prep – is one such example: deliberately low-barrier, intentionally informal, and designed with the constraints of busy professional lives in mind. Yet it would be a mistake to treat any of these choices as effortless. Someone always organises. The planning, coordination, and care that go into making an event feel simple and accessible represents real labour: labour that is itself disproportionately performed by women, and that remains largely invisible precisely because it succeeds. Recognising invisible labour is itself an act of balance.

The symbolic dimension matters too. International Women’s Day is not only about recognition. It is also about modelling equitable practices. If the 2026 theme calls us to balance the scales, then the everyday organisational choices surrounding celebration and recognition should reflect that commitment. Adjusting event timing may seem minor, but it signals attentiveness to the structural conditions shaping women’s participation in professional life.

For organisations seeking to demonstrate genuine commitment to gender equality, this change is practical and powerful. Moving from breakfast to brunch acknowledges the realities of unpaid care, reduces barriers to participation. If we want International Women’s Day to move beyond symbolic gestures toward meaningful recognition, the solution may be surprisingly simple: start later.