When I first heard the news that Australia’s first postpartum hotel, Homb, was closing its doors, it felt like a punch in the gut.
I had interviewed Larissa Leone, the founder, only a few weeks earlier for my podcast, Bold Ideas. Our conversation left me invigorated, even hopeful, that the Australian healthcare system might finally start investing in postpartum care, and in the wellbeing of women as they navigate one of life’s most profound transitions.
So, when I sat editing the episode after hours, my babies asleep beside me, re-listening to her passion and clarity while knowing that her business was collapsing, two things hit home.
First, as a society, we still do not invest enough in women’s health.
Second, just how brutally hard it is for women-led ventures to survive, let alone thrive, in a system designed without them in mind.
The mirage of support
We love to say we support women. We share the hashtags. We celebrate International Women’s Day with cupcakes and corporate slogans. We post graphics about equality and empowerment. But the numbers tell a sobering truth: less than one per cent of venture capital goes to female-founded businesses.
And yes, all founders face risk – the statistic that one in three startups fail within the first three years isn’t gendered. But when you add structural inequity to the mix, the load becomes crushingly uneven.
Women founders are often expected to do more with less: to bootstrap longer, network harder, self-fund deeper, and stretch thinner. They are expected to build not only a business but a movement. To educate, to advocate, to justify why their work matters in the first place.
That invisible labour – the emotional, intellectual, and social energy that women expend to keep doors open and conversations alive – is rarely recognised, let alone remunerated. It’s the kind of work that keeps systems running quietly in the background, even when the system itself refuses to invest in them.
Why care is considered “niche”
When innovations in care, like Homb, emerge, they’re often dismissed as “niche” or “non-commercial.”
Why?
Why is postpartum care “niche”, when being a mother touches every part of society?
It’s because our definition of innovation is still filtered through a masculine lens – one that celebrates scale, disruption, and profit, but undervalues anything that sustains, heals, or nurtures.
If a startup builds an app to optimise logistics, that’s a “tech play.” If a woman builds a service to optimise postpartum recovery, it’s a “passion project.”
The message is clear: care is invisible until it becomes profitable. And by the time it does, it’s often no longer led by the women who dreamed it up.
When we refuse to see care as commercial, we force women to bear the cost of a public good privately.
The burnout of building alone
The burnout that follows is as predictable as it is devastating.
Many women founders I know (myself included) have reached a breaking point at least once. We keep showing up, not just for ourselves but for others – mentoring, uplifting, opening doors. We do it because we believe in community, in solidarity, in the idea that if we keep pushing, things will change.
But collective hope without structural support is a slow form of exhaustion.
When women are expected to carry the emotional weight of reform and the financial risk of entrepreneurship, it’s no wonder so many flame out. It’s not that the passion isn’t there. It’s that the scaffolding isn’t.
There’s only so long you can hold up a system that won’t meet you halfway.
From performative to practical
If we truly want to support women in business, it has to move beyond performance and into practice.
That means embedding equity into policy, not just panels. It means funding women-led ventures, not just featuring them in media campaigns.
As individuals, we can start small.
Buy from the women in your network without expecting a freebie or discount. Share their work. Write the testimonial. Vote with your wallet and your words.
As employers, we can design workplaces that recognise the full spectrum of women’s lives. From menstruation to fertility, pregnancy to menopause. Multi-generational policies that reflect the very real people working with us.
And as a society, we can shift how we value care – not as charity, but as infrastructure. Because when women are well-supported, economies thrive.
Reimagining the system
We don’t lack the talent. We lack the imagination and sadly, the will, to redesign a system that wasn’t built for women to succeed.
Every time a business like Homb closes, we lose more than a startup. We lose an idea that dared to put women’s wellbeing at the centre. We lose a piece of what progress could look like.
It’s not enough to mourn those losses quietly. We need to ask why they keep happening, and what we’re prepared to do differently next time.
Because until we start valuing the work that sustains life, we’ll keep mistaking performative gestures for progress.
If we truly believed women’s work mattered – not just emotionally, but economically – what kind of world could we build?