Every year around the time of International Women’s Day, I pause to reflect.
Today, I do it deliberately. But I didn’t always.
When I started my career in marketing, I was young, optimistic and a little naïve. I still carried the belief that had been instilled in me at my all-girls high school: with a good education, girls could do anything. And of course, we can. But at that stage, I assumed the working world would reflect that same promise.
It didn’t.
I learned that lesson early in my career when I had my first daughter, Charlotte. That moment should have been one of the most exciting milestones of my life. Instead, it became a turning point in a very different way.
I was effectively pushed out of my corporate role simply because I had become a mother. I was suddenly seen as no longer suitable for the career trajectory I had been on. Years later, I came to understand just how deeply that experience affected me. I experienced a form of PTSD following that moment, and in many ways it shaped the next two decades of my life.
It also fuelled a drive in me to help create a more level playing field for women. In many ways, M&C became the vehicle for that.
I incorporated M&C in March 2007 — which means our anniversary always coincides with International Women’s Day. Every year when it comes around, I reflect on the journey of building the business and what the last 18 years have really looked like as a woman running her own company.
When I started M&C, there were still relatively few female business owners. At least in Australia, I often felt like part of the second generation of women building businesses.
Of course there were incredible women leading the way before me — women like Naomi Simpson from RedBalloon, Lisa Messenger from The Collective Hub, and Suze Dafnis of HerBusiness.
But there were only a handful. At the time, it was still relatively rare for a woman to start and grow her own business.
That was surprising for me, because strong, independent women in business were the norm in my life. Both my grandmother and my mother ran their own businesses. It was simply what I had grown up seeing, so I never really questioned whether women belonged in business — to me, of course we did.
The good news is that today there are far more women running their own businesses than when I started. That is something worth celebrating. In fact, there has been a remarkable 46 per cent increase in women business owners in the 20 years to 2022, and women now represent around 36 per cent of small business owners in Australia.
But that still means just over a third of businesses are run by women. We are still not tapping into the full potential of women starting and building companies.
At the same time, it remains significantly harder for female startup founders to access capital. In 2023, just 4 per cent of startup funding went to all-female founding teams, while all-male teams continue to dominate investment.
And in my own industry — marketing — the imbalance is even more striking. Most agencies are still male-owned, and only around 1 per cent of agencies in the US and Australia are female-founded, according to Forbes (2022), despite the marketing industry having a strong female workforce.
Which raises an important question: if women make up such a large proportion of the marketing workforce, why are so few founding and leading agencies?
I don’t pretend to have all the answers. But I do know that change happens when we choose to support and invest in businesses that are building a different kind of future.
This International Women’s Day, I want to take a moment to thank our clients for partnering with M&C. By choosing to work with us, you’re not only collaborating with an incredibly talented team (of course!) — you’re also helping support the kind of change our industry needs.
M&C is proudly female-founded and led. We are deeply committed to equal pay and to creating an environment that supports women throughout every stage of their careers — including nurturing and supporting mothers returning to work, something that is very close to my heart.
We are committed to continuing to drive positive change in our industry, and we are incredibly grateful to everyone who has supported us on this journey.
