IWD 2026: For ALL Women 

This IWD, we’re shining a light on the challenges women and children still face in Australia, and the people meeting them head on: the Women’s Community Shelters.

The UN’s theme for IWD 2026 is Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls. It’s a powerful rallying call. But for an impact-focused commercial investment fund like ABGF, it also prompts a moment of honesty.

We are not gender equity experts. We are not a social services organisation. We are a growth capital fund that has made a deliberate choice to build a genuinely diverse team and leadership group, and that has seen the commercial and cultural benefits of doing so. We have written about this before. We stand by it.

 

 

But there is a difference between building an inclusive workplace and understanding the full complexity of what women and girls in crisis face. That difference matters and being clear about it is how we choose to mark this IWD.

“We are informed but not deep experts in this field. We don’t want to preach about things we don’t fully understand. But we can encourage other organisations to support the people who are: organisations like Women’s Community Shelters, who are doing the hard work every day.” Anthony Healy, CEO, ABGF

What we have built, and what we’ve learned

Over the years, we have been deliberate about culture. Today, 50% of our leadership team, investment team and board are women. We have structured our hiring and promotion processes to reduce bias.

We offer genuinely flexible and gender-neutral parental leave arrangements. We have attracted and kept strong female leaders, and we are proud of that. Not as a point-scoring exercise, but because it has made us better at our jobs.

As Head of People and Portfolio Talent, Bonnie Powell, puts it: “When you bring genuinely diverse perspectives into the room, you make better decisions. For us, diversity is as much a commercial imperative as it is the right thing to do.”

We have spoken to this in previous years: the structural barriers women founders face in raising capital, the false choice between merit and DEI. We won’t repeat all of that here. What this year has added is a more direct encounter with what gender inequality looks like beyond the boardroom.

What the Women’s Community Shelters has shown us

Our volunteering with Women’s Community Shelters (WCS) stopped us in our tracks. Building ‘Just for You’ packs for women and children in crisis, and hearing directly from frontline staff, made the scale of what is happening impossible to abstract away.

Tonight, more than 66,967 women in Australia will sleep without a safe home. One in two women seeking crisis accommodation will be turned away. In NSW alone, domestic and family violence services report average waits of two months. One woman is killed every nine days by a current or former partner.

These are not statistics about a distant problem. They describe women in every suburb and city in Australia.

WCS knows this world far better than we do. Founded in 2012 with a single crisis shelter, they have grown into Australia’s leading for-purpose organisation dedicated to housing and supporting women and children escaping violence and homelessness. In 2025, they supported 1,678 women and children, providing 67,499 emergency and transitional bed nights. Their model spans crisis accommodation, transitional housing and wraparound services: counselling, healthcare, legal aid, education and employment support.

As CEO Annabelle Daniel OAM puts it: “Every woman and child should have a safe and secure home. Abuse and homelessness can impact every element of their life – their health, their education, their relationships, sense of self, and future prospects. We invite you to walk beside and support the women and children in our shelters. You won’t just be changing lives – you will be saving lives.”

What our experience with WCS has given us is a more grounded understanding of the connection between economic inequality and domestic and family violence. Women who earn less have fewer resources to leave dangerous relationships and fewer options when housing falls through. The gender pay gap is not just a workplace equity measure. It is one of the conditions that makes leaving violence harder.

We understand that better now than we did before. But we don’t pretend to be experts in it. WCS are.

Photo: Inner West Safe Haven. Image credit: Cassandra Hannagan.

What we’re asking this IWD

We are not experts in domestic violence policy, crisis housing, or the systemic failures that leave women behind. But we have a platform, and we can use it.

WCS is doing the work and doing it well. Like many organisations on the frontlines of this issue, they are under-resourced. They need funding, volunteers, and visibility.

If you are a business leader reading this: you don’t need to be an expert to help. You need to show up. As our own experience showed us, there is something powerful about showing up in person. It changes the way you understand the issue, and it changes the people in your team.

Three ways to act this IWD: 

1. Visit womenscommunityshelters.org.au to understand the scale of what is happening.

2. A donation to WCS directly funds safe beds and support for women who have left everything behind. Donate at womens-community-shelters-donate.raiselysite.com.

3. If your business can contribute through corporate volunteering, workplace giving or the Walk the Talk Corporate program, reach out to WCS directly at womenscommunityshelters.org.au/get-involved.

If you or someone you know needs support:
National Sexual Assault, Domestic Family Violence Counselling Service: 1800 737 732
Link2Home Crisis Accommodation: 1800 152 152
In an emergency, call 000

 

Rights. Justice. Action. For ALL Women and Girls.
This International Women’s Day, we acknowledge the challenges faced by all women, including those with intersecting identities, and reaffirm our commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion.

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