Michele O’Neill
For a long time, women-only awards in media have seemed justified, even essential.
They emerged in an industry where women were excluded from leadership, underrepresented in creative and commercial decision-making, paid less, promoted more slowly, and routinely overlooked. Separate recognition existed to counter invisibility. It created platforms, pathways, and proof points where none had existed.
But that was then. This is now. In 2026, the question the industry should confront isn’t why these awards were created, but why they continue unchanged.
There are no Men in Media awards. No Male Leaders of the Year. No gender-qualified accolades for men succeeding in industries they already dominate. Yet women, including those running agencies, holding P&Ls, leading creative departments, marketing teams, and shaping commercial outcomes, are still funnelled into gender-segregated recognition.
At what point does inclusion quietly turn into segregation? I can appreciate 30 Under 30, acknowledging young guns irrespective of gender. Maybe we’ll see 60 Over 60 at some point, but that’s a dream for another day.
Recognition is not the same as Equality
Awards are symbolic. Power is structural. Visibility does not equal authority. Bringing a trophy back to the office doesn’t magically redistribute budgets, hiring power, marketing control, or commercial risk. For senior women, separate recognition can subtly reinforce a message the industry insists it has moved beyond: that excellence still needs a gender qualifier.
Best female leader is not the same as best leader.
At the executive level, where credibility is currency, this distinction matters. Senior women are no longer asking to be noticed. They are asking to be trusted, funded, backed, and given the same latitude to fail and recover that men have always been afforded.
Do women need a separate stage?
When talented people are repeatedly recognised only in gendered contexts, the unintended message is that full professional parity remains just out of reach. Women still need a separate lane, a separate stage, a separate form of validation. Progress that never evolves stops being progress.
What does equality actually look like in 2026?
If the media industry is serious about equality, the measure can’t stop at who gets applauded. It has to extend to who gets to build.
Here in Australia, one pattern remains stubbornly intact. The arrival of new agencies, particularly independents, has been overwhelmingly male-led. With a few notable exceptions, the founders shaping the next generation of agencies, consultancies, and creative shops are men. They control the equity, the narrative, the client relationships, and, crucially, the exit value. Women, meanwhile, are still more likely to be celebrated as leaders within structures they didn’t create. That gap matters.
Founding an agency isn’t just a career milestone, it’s a power move. It’s ownership. It’s long-term influence. It’s the ability to design culture, set commercial terms, and decide whose work gets funded and whose voice gets amplified.
If equality has truly arrived, we should be asking why so few women are founding the businesses shaping media’s next decade. Is it access to capital? Risk tolerance shaped by unequal financial security? Networks that still favour male founders when clients and investors choose who to back? Or an industry that praises women for stewardship but rewards men for ambition?
Only last week I was approached by a well-established independent to help them “craft a new narrative because we’re old white guys and we need to change the optics.” That anecdote is a reminder: the structural problem remains.
Perhaps the real test of progress in 2026 isn’t how many women appear on stage at gender-specific awards nights, but whether women are:
- founding agencies nearer the same rate as men
- holding meaningful equity, not just titles
- attracting investment and major clients
- scaling businesses they own, not just manage
That is what equality looks like in practice: permission and support to build in the first place. Until women have the same structural freedom to start, scale, and sell businesses without being framed as exceptions, the industry’s work isn’t done. No number of perspex pointy award trophies will close that gap.
The next phase of progress
None of this is an argument for erasing history or withdrawing support where it’s still needed. It is an argument for evolution.
What if women-only awards came with sunset clauses? What if success was measured not by how long they endure, but by when they are no longer required? What if the ultimate signal of progress was obsolescence, or have we solved the problem and we forgot to stop selling tickets?
If media has changed and leadership has changed, the question now is whether the way we define and reward success has evolved with it. If equality is the goal, the most useful conversations in 2026 may be less about who we celebrate separately, and more about how we create conditions where success no longer needs to be qualified at all.
Michele O’Neill
Footnote: I speak from long experience. Back in 1977, I became Australia’s first commercial TV camera operator. The Operations Dept insisted my roster read Female Camera Man. In fairness, it was almost fifty years ago. We’ve come a long way, but some habits are remarkably persistent.