Equal Pay Day: Why Women Are Done Playing Small
- Shaye Thyer
- Sep 12
- 2 min read
Updated: Sep 19
Every year, Equal Pay Day comes around in Australia and slaps us with the same bitter reminder: the system is not built for women to thrive.
This year, the data tells us that women had to work 50 extra days into the new financial year just to catch up with what men had already earned by 30 June.
Let me put that plainly:
$242 less per week.
$12,500 less per year.
$28,000 less when bonuses and part-time work are factored in.
And if you’re in the finance industry (yes, my profession), women are still taking home 22% less than men. But hey, at least we’re invited to organise our own International Women’s Day morning teas, right?
Cute.
The Hidden Cost of the Gender Pay Gap
Equal Pay Day isn’t just about numbers on a payslip. It’s about the cumulative cost of being a woman at work.
It shows up in ways the data can’t always capture:
Return-to-office mandates that pretend caregiving isn’t real.
Corporate golf days keeping the boys’ club alive.
Women doing 60% more domestic labour, even when we’re the higher earner.
The invisible mental load – school calls, ageing parents, client fires – all landing squarely on our plates.
This isn’t just about money. It’s about being set up to burn out by 40.
Stop Asking “What Can Women Do?”
Whenever these conversations pop up, someone inevitably asks: “What can women do about it?”
Wrong question.
The real questions are:
Why are jobs still designed as if there’s a full-time wife at home?
Why are flexible work policies first on the chopping block?
Why does male mediocrity outrank female competence?
Why is “golf” considered networking, but “school pick-up” a liability?
Equal Pay Day isn’t about fixing women. It’s about fixing systems designed to keep women small, overworked, and underpaid.
Why Women in Business Hold the Power
Here’s the part I love: when you run your own business, you stop waiting for permission.
You pay yourself what you’re worth.
You design policies that fit real life.
You build your own table instead of begging for a seat.
That’s why more women are walking away from the corporate treadmill and building businesses that support their lives – not the other way around.
And that’s the real revolution Equal Pay Day reminds us of.
Rewriting the Calendar
Equal Pay Day is not just a marker on the calendar. It’s a mirror held up to a system that was never built with us in mind.
But if you’re a woman in business? You get to rewrite the rules.
Because when women have money, they have choice. The choice to walk away. The choice to rebuild. The choice to live life on their terms.
And that’s why we’re not just catching up anymore. We’re rewriting the whole damn calendar.
Your Turn
What’s one thing you’re no longer tolerating in the name of “professionalism”? Share it below – I want to hear it.
Small Business Support to Get You Financially Independent
My Worthy Collective is for women running service-based businesses who are sick of winging it — tired of the noise, the spreadsheets they don’t trust, and the advisors who don’t get it.
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