Four practical sessions on respect, safety and gender equity, starting 3 July, designed for employers who want to lead real change in digital and tech.
Overview
- According to WORK180’s 2026 What Women Want Report, 54% of women say a lack of representation in leadership is holding their careers back, and 82% who don’t feel safe reporting harassment are already looking to leave.
- Safety, respect and inclusion aren’t soft issues in digital and tech, they’re a big part of the reason women stay or go.
- A complimentary four-part webinar series, starting 3 July, gives employers and people managers practical tools to build safer, more inclusive tech workplaces.
- WORK180 joins Women in Technology, Professionals Australia and Queensland University of Technology across all four sessions. Complimentary to attend, one hour each, fortnightly from July to September.
Women are leaving Australia’s digital and technology sector, and the data tells us exactly why.
According to WORK180’s 2026 What Women Want Report, 58% of women say they are being judged or underestimated due to gender stereotypes, including being seen as less committed or unsuited to certain roles. 54% say a lack of women in leadership is actively holding their careers back. 52% point to biased promotion decisions. And 48% say fear of speaking up is getting in the way of their progress entirely.
These are not abstract findings. In a sector already struggling with representation, they describe the daily reality for women in digital and tech roles right now. When those conditions go unaddressed, the consequences are clear: among women who wouldn’t feel comfortable reporting sexual harassment to their employer, 82% are already open to leaving or actively looking for a new role.
The Leading for a Safer Tech Sector Webinar Series is part of the FemTech project, a multi-year Australian Government initiative delivered by Professionals Australia to increase women’s participation in digital and technology industries. The employers who take that seriously are the ones who will keep the talent others are losing. That’s what this series is built to support.
Four sessions. One through-line.
The webinar series runs across four Friday lunchtimes from July to September, with each session building on the last. Together they take you from understanding the scale of the problem to knowing your legal obligations and, ultimately, how to lead differently.
It opens by asking the hard question: what is actually driving women and gender-diverse people out of the sector, and what does the evidence say works? From there, it moves into Respect@Work and what a genuine prevention-first approach looks like in practice. The third session examines the legal compliance requirements employers need to understand. The final session brings it all together, focusing on leadership and what it takes to build a culture that is genuinely safer and more inclusive, not just on paper.
You can join at any point in the series. Attending all four gives you the most complete picture.
The people leading the conversation
Aesha Awan, the Program Manager for Professionals Australia’s FemTech Project. The project focuses on improving outcomes for women in the digital and technology industry across priority areas including TAFE training, transition to employment, recruitment outcomes and workplace conditions.
Sapphire Parsons is a Senior Workplace Lawyer whose 2024 advocacy contributed to Australia’s first recommendation to regulate gendered violence under work health and safety laws. In 2025 she led a major coalition submission to Safe Work Australia backed by 33 peak bodies and international experts. She brings that legal sharpness directly to the compliance and prevention sessions.
Louise Rogers and Hannah Davis, both DEI Advisors at WORK180, bring a combined two decades of experience designing inclusion strategies that create measurable change across the public and private sectors globally. Their intersectional, research-led approach shapes how every session is framed.
Also joining the series are Lisa Cawthorne, General Manager of Women in Technology, and Dr Leonie Simpson, Associate Professor in Cybersecurity at QUT.
Event details
- All four sessions are complimentary and run 12:00–1:00pm AEST
- Session 1: Friday 3 July — The Respect and Equity Imperative in Australia’s Digital and Tech Sector
- Session 2: Friday 24 July — Respect@Work Through a Safety Lens
- Sessions 3 and 4 follow in August and September
- You can register once to secure your place across the full series
If the numbers at the top of this article describe your workplace, or a workplace you’re responsible for, this is where to start.
