Equality Without Equity Is Bullshit: How to Kick Off Your 2026 Gender Equity Audit
For women tracking where their power goes, managers who'll actually use theirs, and organisations ready to stop protecting men's comfort.
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Two weeks ago, I wrote about how my ambition didn’t die, it shifted, how the capitalist patriarchal system made the status quo unlivable for women, how resilience is a scam designed to make women absorb harm so organisations don’t have to change.
Last week, I wrote a love letter to the women still inside broken systems. The women who kept going when opting out wasn’t an option.
This week, I’m getting practical.
Because rage without action changes nothing, and I refuse to admire the problem while asking women to carry the cost.
So here it is. Your gender equity audit playbook for 2026.
For individuals. For managers. For organisations.
This is how we actually change things.
First, Let’s Get Something Straight About Equity
Gender equity is not gender equality.
And confusing the two is exactly why we’re still having the same bloody conversations decades later.
Equity is the deliberate correction of historical and systemic injustices.
According to the UN, equity means recognising that different people with different levels of advantage require different approaches and resources to get equitable outcomes. It’s about fairness and justice in both procedure and distribution of resources.
Critically, equity requires different treatment to achieve equal outcomes when starting positions are unequal. This image has been shared widely, and I have always found it very helpful.
Here’s what this looks like in practice.
I sat on a sports board. We were selecting a new board member. Final two candidates, both excellent. One woman, one man.
She got the role.
Why?
Because that sport and that board had been male-dominated for 150+ years.
That’s an equity play, not “reverse discrimination.”
That’s correcting a century and a half of systemic exclusion.
When you’ve had a 150-year head start, “treating everyone the same” just perpetuates the advantage.
Truth Bomb: Equity means correcting past wrongs. If that makes you uncomfortable, ask yourself who benefits from your discomfort.
Drop a tip in the Tip Jar if my work added value.
My Personal Gender Equity Audit
I don’t just talk about equity. I audit my own behaviour constantly. And no, I do not always get it right. But I am ALWAYS intentional about centring women in everything I do.
Here’s what that actually looks like.
Where my money goes:
I prioritise women-owned businesses and gender-balanced organisations for every purchase. My business alliances and partnerships go to women-owned ventures or organisations demonstrably committed to women’s rights. I track this monthly. Because what gets measured gets done.
What I consume and amplify:
I prioritise reading women authors. I need to. My research for The Leadership Compass revealed that men account for almost all of the top 200 business books.
My podcast? Women only. No exceptions. No “but he’s really good” compromises.
I follow and amplify more women than men on social media. Deliberately. Systematically.
What I show the world:
I prioritise imagery featuring Black/Blak Women, Women of Colour, and other underrepresented women in all my content. Every image choice is an intentional equity choice.
I could be accused of virtue signalling, but I reject that wholeheartedly. This is a systematic correction of my own ingrained defaults towards whiteness and maleness.
Truth Bomb: If I, a woman who has spent a long time as a gender equity advisor, still have to consciously audit my choices, then so does everyone.
What follows is where equity stops being a belief and starts becoming a practice.
