Australian women aren’t short on ambition. Most of us are actively looking to excel in our careers, secure promotions and if we’re so inclined, advance into senior leadership.
It’s a reality that was confirmed in a recent survey from Women’s Agenda conducted in partnership with Cultivate Sponsorship, which found that more than half (55 per cent) of women surveyed hoped to be promoted within the next three years.
And most women take the task of planning the next steps in their career seriously, with 60 per cent saying they have a career plan in place.
Among these women, 24 per cent say they have a plan for the next 12 months, 28 per cent say they have a two-to-five year plan, and eight per cent have a plan looking into the next five-to-ten years.
But there’s a problem sitting somewhere along this pipeline. Women’s ambition and commitment to planning isn’t translating into clear career pathways, and it’s an issue that should be concerning employers across the country.
A lack of clarity on career pathways
Just one in four women say they have clarity over the options ahead for their careers. Meanwhile, 43 per cent say a lack of clear options is getting in the way of their next promotion.
For culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) women, there is also a sense that there is greater need to plan ahead. A significant portion of these women (43 per cent) say they have clarity over the options ahead for their career. This figure is almost double the wider cohort of women.
But these conversations are occurring outside of the workplace and culturally diverse women appear to have a greater reliance on external networks when it comes to career planning.
“There are no clear pathways so it would be a waste of time,” one woman told our survey.
“I feel by voicing them [career ambitions] that it might reflect poorly on me if I don’t achieve them,” another said.
Only 26 per cent of CALD women say they voice their career ambitions to their immediate manager, compared with around 55 per cent in the main sample. Just 19 per cent of CALD women voice their ambitions to peers and colleagues at work. By contrast, 60 per cent voice their ambitions to friends outside of work and their industry.
What this tells us is that women from culturally diverse backgrounds appear to be doing much of their career planning themselves at home or with friends, outside the organisations where decisions about their progression will ultimately be made.
Managing Director of Cultivate Sponsorship Katriina Tähkä says these findings should prompt us to ask why women don’t feel like they can speak up about their career plans within their workplace.
“The first question we need to ask is ‘why? Is this because women are worried about articulating their ambitions in the workplace?” Tähkä said. “Are they afraid of the consequences or how they will be perceived?”
“If a woman is mapping her next move with her family or friends rather than with anyone senior in her organisation, that’s not a personal choice happening in a vacuum.
“It’s usually a rational response to an environment that hasn’t given her a reason to trust it with her ambition.”
For Tähkä, it’s clear that organisations are missing out on exactly the conversation that determines whether they keep their best people or lose them. She suggests formal sponsorship programs within workplaces could help organisations to fill this gap.
“The opportunity is just as clear. Every one of those kitchen-table conversations is a conversation a sponsor could be having instead, or alongside,” Tähkä said.
“Structured sponsorship doesn’t replace family and friends as a support network. It gives organisations a legitimate way into a conversation they’ve largely been locked out of, and a reason for that trust to be extended inside the business rather than only outside it.”
In practice, this looks like pairing women with someone senior enough to advocate for her outside the room she’s in, not just inside her own team. With regular touchpoints, a clear plan and cultural safety built into how this relationship is set up, the potential becomes much more profound.
“At Warra, our First Nations sponsorship program, we’ve learned that sponsorship works best as a two-way exchange in a culturally safe framework,” Tähkä said.
“The sponsor listens, learns and then advocates, and the sponsee shares cultural knowledge back into the organisation. That reciprocity is the model I’d want to see applied more broadly wherever sponsorship crosses cultural difference, including for culturally diverse women more generally, which is exactly the direction we’re building toward next.”
What else would actually help women to achieve their ambitions?
For employers, the findings of the Women’s Workplace Visibility 2026 report point to a few practical changes that could ease the pressure on individual women to navigate their career paths alone.
- Make the pathways visible
Employees should be able to understand what progression can look like, what skills and experience are valued at the organisation, and what opportunities exist beyond their current role. Some women in the survey noted they felt like they couldn’t speak up about their ambitions because it would be perceived negatively by their manager.
- Ask about ambition before there’s a gap to fill
Career conversations shouldn’t only happen when someone is already applying for a promotion or handing in their resignation. Employers have a key role to play in ensuring women feel comfortable and safe in their workplace to talk about their ambition.
- Give women access to senior decision-makers
If conversations about ambition stop at the line manager, senior leaders in organisations are missing information about who wants to progress and where they want to go.
- Build sponsorship deliberately
Informal networks will always play a role in careers, but relying on them alone can mean the same people continue to benefit from the same relationships. Cultivate Sponsorship’s Willow program, or Warra program (which specifically supports Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employees) can support organisations in this space.
- Look at who is being perceived as leadership material
The report found age was the factor most frequently cited as influencing how women’s abilities are perceived, particularly among a sample weighted towards women with 15 or more years of career experience.
Access the Women’s Workplace Visibility 2026 here.