Visibility got us in the room. Belonging will keep us in the room.

When I first started in project management, I was often the only woman in the room. 

Enterprise architects. Infrastructure leads. Application specialists.
Whiteboards full of integration diagrams and me. 

No one said I didn’t belong.
But no one explicitly made space for me either. 

I had visibility. But belonging? That was something I had to earn and sometimes, defend. 

Fast forward to today, and things have improved. 

There are more women in digital roles.
More female CIOs.
More diversity on panels. 

We’ve shifted from “Where are the women?” to “There are women here.” 

Visibility has increased. 

But here’s the harder question: 

Are women staying?
Are they influencing?
Are they progressing without reshaping themselves to fit the room? 

Because visibility and belonging are not the same thing. 

Under the 2026 International Women’s Day theme, Balance the Scales, this is where the real work sits. 

The pipeline is about who enters and who exits.

In Australia, women make up roughly 15% of STEM-qualified occupations, according to the Australian Government’s STEM Equity Monitor. Yet women represent a significantly higher proportion of overall university graduates. 

Somewhere between education and leadership, we are losing talent. 

Deloitte’s global research on belonging tells us that employees who feel they truly belong are: 

• Three times more likely to feel proud of their organisation 
• Five times more likely to want to stay 
• Twice as likely to feel psychologically safe 

Belonging is a retention strategy and in STEM environments – particularly technical, delivery-focused or transformation-heavy environments – belonging is often the silent differentiator between persistence and departure. 

The quiet erosion of belonging

Let me paint a scene. 

A young female project manager joins her first large transformation program. She’s done the analysis. She’s prepared her argument. She’s ready. 

She begins to speak. 

She’s interrupted. 

She continues. 

Her idea is later repeated by someone else — and this time it lands. 

Nothing dramatic happened.
No overt discrimination.
No public humiliation. 

But something subtle shifted. 

Micro-signals accumulate. 

Am I overreacting?
Should I push harder?
Is it worth the friction? 

Belonging doesn’t disappear in one moment; it erodes in small ones and erosion, over time, becomes exit. 

Presence. Participation. Belonging.

In my work across transformation programs, I see three stages of inclusion: 

1. Presence – You are invited into the room. 
2. Participation – You are allowed to contribute. 
3. Belonging – You can challenge, influence, and lead without shrinking yourself. 

Many organisations measure presence.
Few measure belonging. 

Presence is visible.
Belonging is felt and feeling matters. 

Why this matters in STEM

STEM environments are problem-focused and outcome-driven. That’s their strength. 

But they can also unintentionally reward dominance over depth, confidence over curiosity, volume over nuance. 

When influence is equated with speaking first or speaking loudest, some voices self-censor. 

And when women feel they must constantly prove technical competence before contributing strategic insight, the cognitive load increases. 

It becomes exhausting. 

Exhaustion is not a diversity strategy. 

“Balance the Scales” isn’t symbolic — it’s structural.

The 2026 IWD theme calls us to balance the scales. 

Balancing the scales means looking beyond headcount targets. 

It means asking: 

• Who gets interrupted? 
• Who gets credited? 
• Who gets sponsored? 
• Who is invited into high-visibility projects? 
• Who is labelled “assertive” versus “abrasive”? 

It means noticing who is carrying the invisible labour of fitting in. 

And it means leaders designing inclusion deliberately — not assuming goodwill is enough. 

Because belonging doesn’t happen accidentally.
It happens intentionally. 

Visibility was the first wave. Belonging is the next frontier.

We should absolutely celebrate the progress. 

More women are studying STEM.
More women are entering digital careers.
More women are leading major programs. 

But if we stop at visibility, we risk mistaking presence for parity. 

Balancing the scales requires us to look at the lived experience inside the room — not just the numbers on the slide deck. 

When women belong, organisations gain: 

• Broader problem-solving perspectives 
• Greater innovation 
• Higher retention 
• Stronger culture 
• More resilient leadership pipelines 

Belonging is not a women’s issue. 

It’s a performance advantage. 

A personal reflection

I look back at those early workshops and meetings where I was the only woman in the room. 

Visibility got me there. 

Belonging came later — through competence, resilience, allies, and leaders who valued contribution over conformity. 

But it shouldn’t require resilience as a prerequisite. 

It should require design. 

Because when women don’t just enter the room — but stay, influence, and lead — the whole system performs better. 

And that is how we truly balance the scales.