Earlier this month I spent a week at the UN in New York, talking about gender equality. Here’s why it matters for every woman who grows, makes, sells or loves drinking Australian wine.

By Jane Thomson OAM · March 2026

I want to tell you about a week that changed the way I think about the world, and about my work advocating for gender equality in the wine industry.

On 7 March, I flew to New York to attend the 70th session of the Commission on the Status of Women (known as CSW70) at the United Nations headquarters. The Commission on the Status of Women is the UN’s largest annual gathering focused on gender equality and women’s rights. Every year it brings together governments, organisations and advocates from around the world to talk about what’s working, what’s not, and what needs to happen next.

I was there as part of the official Australian delegation alongside UN Women Australia, supported by Wine Australia and Australian Women in Wine. My job was to listen, to learn, and to bring those insights home.

So here’s what I heard. And here’s why I think it matters – especially for a community like ours that’s been championing women in wine since day one.

Pour yourself something nice. This is going to be a good conversation.

The backlash is real. And its favourite weapon is your phone

I’m going to start with the thing that kept me awake in my New York hotel room.

Session after session at the UN named something I think a lot of us feel but don’t always say out loud: the pushback against gender equality isn’t fading. It’s getting louder, better organised, and better funded. And its most effective weapon? The algorithm. Outrage generates clicks. Clicks generate profits. The most extreme voices get amplified. The rest of us get exhausted and go quiet.

Here’s a number that floored me: 70 per cent of all women experience online violence in the course of their work. For women in politics and public life, it’s 85 per cent.

Eighty-five per cent.

Women aren’t disappearing from public conversations because they’ve run out of things to say. They’re disappearing because it’s become genuinely unsafe to say them.

I sat with that and thought about the women we know and love in wine. The winemakers you’ve met at our events. The producers whose stories you’ve followed, whose bottles you’ve bought, whose cellar doors you’ve visited on our tours. And I found myself wondering: how many of them are holding back from being more visible online because of what that space has become?

As a community that has always existed to support women in wine, that should make us angry. And it should make us louder.

Gender equity is good business. Really good business.

If you’ve ever been stuck at a dinner party trying to explain why gender equality matters to someone who thinks it’s “all gone too far,” the Nordic countries have a gift for you.

The Nordic delegates at the UN presented evidence that is, frankly, hard to argue with: where you have gender equity, you get stronger economies, healthier democracies and – this is the kicker – happier people! Across the board. Measurably. Documented.

But the finding that made me nearly fall off my chair was about parental leave. In countries where men take parental leave in equal proportion to women, the employment bias against women of child-bearing age disappears. When employers know that anyone might take leave to have a baby, not just women, they stop penalising women for the possibility.

Think about that for a moment. The women who grow your grapes and make your wine work in a world built around vintage which is intense, physical, seasonal work. If employers assume that only women will take time off to have children, women become a hiring risk. But when men take the same leave, that bias evaporates. It’s not a theory. It’s happening in countries right now.

It starts at home (especially if home is regional Australia)

Here’s where it got personal for me.

The UN has designated 2026 as the Year of the Female Farmer, and a recurring theme was that gender equity in the workplace is inseparable from equity in the home. You can have the most progressive employer in the world, but if you’re still doing 80 per cent of the cooking, the cleaning, the school runs and the emotional heavy-lifting at home, you’re running the race with one leg tied behind you.

Gender inequality is consistently worse in regional and agricultural communities than in cities. And wine is, at its heart, a regional, agricultural world. The women who make it know this reality intimately.

Australia’s Dr Anna Cody, Sex Discrimination Commissioner for the Australian Human Rights Commission, nailed it:

I don’t know a single woman, in wine or out of it, who read that and didn’t feel a flicker of recognition. Many of you will have lived this. And many of the women producers you support through FLWS are living it right now.

Can we please stop asking men to “champion” women?

Okay. This one rearranged some furniture in my brain.

A session on masculinity and gender equity made a point I have not been able to stop thinking about: we need to retire the word “champion” when we talk about men and gender equality.

Why? Because “champion” is a word about winning. It positions men as heroes riding in on a white horse to save the day for the women. Which is, and I say this with love, exactly the dynamic we are trying to dismantle.

What we actually need is for men to engage. To do the parental leave, share the care work, have the uncomfortable conversations about masculinity, and show up not as heroes but as partners. The patriarchy, by the way, harms men too. Rigid expectations about what it means to “be a man” affect men’s mental health, their relationships, and their ability to live full lives.

So here’s something to think about: next time you see a wine brand proudly announcing that a senior man is their “gender equality champion,” ask one question. Is he actually changing his own behaviour: taking the leave, sharing the load, challenging the culture. Or is he just wearing a very shiny badge for his public efforts to help women in his workplace get ahead?

Badge-wearing is not the same as change.

What is not counted, doesn’t count

Data nerds, this section is for you. (And if you don’t think you’re a data nerd, give it a minute.)

A major theme at the UN was the critical importance of reliable, current data. Policy is made on evidence. If you don’t have the numbers, you don’t get the funding, the laws, or the attention. In this age of misinformation, disinformation and simplistic narratives, having robust data is more important than ever.

But, and this is the bit I particularly loved, the UN also emphasised that we need to count the good stuff, not just the bad. We need data on what’s working, who’s leading, and where the wins are. Because if you only ever count the problems, you lose the momentum that comes from knowing things are actually getting better.

The women in Australian wine have good stories to tell. We just need to get better at collecting them, measuring them, and shouting about them.

Flexibility can be a trap (sorry, but it’s true)

This one is going to sting a little, because I know flexible work feels like a win. And it can be. But the UN explored the shadow side, and it’s something we need to talk about honestly.

Women take up flexible and casual work at much higher rates than men. What looks like freedom – choose your hours! work around the kids! – can actually mean lower income, fewer opportunities for promotion, less superannuation at retirement, and reduced access to things like home loans.

Women are not poorer than men by accident. They are poorer by design. And the structures of casual and seasonal work, the kind of work that gets wine from vine to bottle, can quietly entrench that disadvantage while looking like a perk.

When you pick up a bottle of Australian wine, there’s a good chance that a woman helped grow those grapes, make that wine, or get it to you. Quite possibly on a casual or seasonal contract that offered her flexibility but not much security. That’s something worth knowing about, and worth caring about.

Right. So what do we actually do?

I know. I’ve just given you a lot. So let me land this plane.

I came home from New York absolutely buzzing, and also very clear-eyed about one thing: the work our Fabulous Ladies Wine Society community has been doing for years –  supporting women in wine, buying their products, telling their stories, showing up – is exactly the kind of action the world is calling for. What I learned at the UN confirms that we’re on the right track. But there are also new tools that can accelerate the change.

The conversations at the United Nations haven’t ended. If anything, they’ve just started to get interesting. But the real test was never what happens in a conference room in New York. It’s what happens in a winery in McLaren Vale, a vineyard in the Yarra Valley, a kitchen table in regional Tasmania –  and around every table where Fabulous Ladies gather to drink good wine and talk about the things that matter.

This community has been doing this work for years. What I brought home from the UN is confirmation that it matters, evidence that it works, and a renewed fire to keep going.

I am so grateful to Wine Australia and Australian Women in Wine for making it possible for me to be there, and to UN Women Australia for inviting me to be part of their cohort. And I am grateful to every single one of you – for being part of a community that has always understood that supporting women in wine is not a trend. It’s the point. (You’re probably going to need a top-up.)

Let’s keep going,

Jane x