Leadership | Women

Why leadership diversity requires more than good intentions

Ritchelle Drilon
July 24, 2026

Australian organisations cannot improve leadership diversity by treating all women as though they face the same barriers.

Women from culturally and racially marginalised backgrounds often encounter overlapping forms of discrimination that affect recruitment, promotion, sponsorship and access to influential networks. These barriers are not caused by a lack of ambition or capability. They are built into workplace systems and assumptions about what leadership looks like.

Insights from the RISE Project show that organisations make stronger progress when they address these structural barriers directly.

A targeted approach to leadership equity

RISE—Realise, Inspire, Support and Energise—was a four-year initiative involving 25 organisations across Australia.

Led by Diversity Council Australia, Settlement Services International and Chief Executive Women, the project aimed to improve leadership pathways for culturally and racially marginalised women.

The project combined organisational assessments, mentoring, coaching and insights from women with lived experience. It focused on how organisations could move beyond broad diversity commitments and make practical changes to workplace systems.

A total of 360 women took part in the project. More than 620 mentoring or coaching sessions were delivered, and 269 participants took at least one step towards a career goal. Sixty-three women secured a new role.

While these figures show individual progress, the project’s wider lesson is that leadership inequality cannot be solved through individual development alone.

One-size-fits-all programs have limits

Many workplace gender equity programs are designed around the experiences of women as a single group.

This approach can overlook the additional barriers faced by women from different cultural and racial backgrounds.

A leadership program may help participants build confidence, for example, but it will have limited impact if promotion decisions continue to favour a narrow leadership style. Mentoring may provide useful guidance, but it cannot replace access to senior decision-makers who can advocate for someone’s advancement.

Organisations must therefore examine how their systems operate, who benefits from them and who is consistently excluded.

The focus should not be on helping women adapt to unfair systems. It should be on changing the systems themselves.

Racial literacy is a leadership capability

One of the strongest themes from RISE was the importance of racial literacy.

Racial literacy is the ability to recognise, understand and respond to racism and racial inequality. In workplaces, it includes understanding how bias can shape recruitment, performance reviews, team dynamics and leadership decisions.

Without this knowledge, organisations may struggle to identify discrimination unless it is obvious or deliberate.

Bias is often embedded in routine practices. Terms such as “leadership presence”, “cultural fit” or “communication style” can appear neutral while rewarding behaviours associated with a particular cultural background.

Building racial literacy helps leaders question these assumptions and make more informed decisions. It also gives employees a clearer language for discussing race and inequality without placing the responsibility for education on culturally and racially marginalised staff.

Lived experience must shape decisions

Organisations made better progress when they listened directly to the women affected by their policies and practices.

This means more than inviting feedback after a program has been designed. Culturally and racially marginalised women should have a meaningful role in identifying problems, setting priorities and assessing whether changes are working. Their experiences can reveal barriers that may not be visible in high-level workforce data.

These barriers may include being overlooked for high-profile assignments, receiving less useful feedback, carrying unpaid cultural responsibilities or feeling pressure to change their identity to fit established leadership norms.

Listening is only useful when it leads to action. Organisations must be prepared to change policies, processes and behaviours in response to what they hear.

Sponsorship opens doors that mentoring cannot

Mentoring and coaching can help women clarify goals, build skills and navigate workplace challenges. However, career progression often depends on sponsorship.

A sponsor is a senior person who uses their influence to create opportunities for someone else. They may recommend a person for promotion, put their name forward for a major project or advocate for them in rooms where important decisions are made.

Access to this kind of support is rarely distributed equally.

Informal networks often develop around shared backgrounds, experiences and social connections. Employees who sit outside these networks may have fewer opportunities to build relationships with influential leaders. Organisations can address this by creating transparent sponsorship programs and holding senior leaders accountable for supporting a diverse group of emerging leaders.

Better data supports better decisions

Organisations also need reliable data to understand where inequality occurs.

Workforce figures should be examined across recruitment, retention, promotion, pay, leadership development and employee experience.

Broad categories may hide important differences. Data that shows overall progress for women may still conceal poor outcomes for women from culturally and racially marginalised backgrounds.

Organisations should collect and use this information carefully, with clear privacy protections and input from employees. The aim is not to measure diversity for its own sake. It is to identify where barriers exist, test whether changes are effective and hold leaders accountable for results.

Leadership pathways need to be redesigned

The decline in diversity at senior levels is not accidental. It reflects the cumulative effect of workplace decisions made over time.

To change that pattern, organisations need to review how leadership potential is identified, how opportunities are allocated and how promotion decisions are made.

Selection criteria should be clear and relevant. Leadership development opportunities should be distributed fairly. Decision-making panels should be equipped to recognise bias, and progression data should be reviewed regularly.

Senior leaders also need to take responsibility for change. Diversity should not be left to human resources teams or employee networks. It must be treated as a governance, workforce and leadership issue.

Progress requires more than good intentions

Culturally and racially marginalised women are not under-represented in leadership because they lack talent, ambition or readiness.

They are under-represented because many workplace systems continue to favour a narrow view of leadership and success.

Organisations that want different outcomes must be willing to ask harder questions. They need to listen to the women most affected, examine how power and opportunity are distributed, and redesign systems that reproduce inequality.