Pulse Check: The Visibility of Women’s Giving

In 2024, She Gives was launched to grow women's giving by celebrating, sharing and inspiring women who give, at any scale, to any cause. Building on this ambition, She Gives: Growing Women's Giving in Australia (2026) made three recommendations to grow women’s giving in Australia. The first recommendation was to recognise women’s crucial role in giving through storytelling and formal public recognition. The She Gives Pulse Check: The Visibility of Women's Giving (2026) examines whether visibility through these strategies is beginning to shift.

This Pulse Check examines, over a three-year period (FY24-FY26), the visibility of women’s giving in the media and in the Order of Australia honours lists. Media is a key channel for storytelling, shaping which stories about giving are shared and amplified to public audiences, and how they are represented. The Australian honours system is one of the highest levels of public honour, recognising people whose contributions are deemed to have made a significant impact.

Together, these metrics provide a snapshot of where women’s giving has become more visible, where gaps remain and what still needs to change. Tracking this visibility over time will help determine whether greater visibility in storytelling and national recognition are contributing to the greater ambition to grow women’s giving in Australia.

Key Insights:

• Women’s giving is becoming significantly more visible in Australian philanthropy media coverage. Women-led stories of giving more than doubled from 14% to 32% of the highest-reach Australian philanthropy media coverage between FY24 and FY26.
• How women’s giving is represented in the media is different from how men’s giving is represented. Women’s giving is more often told through personal and emotive narratives, reflective of how women described their motivations for giving in the She Gives research.
• There is still a gap in the diversity of women represented in Australian philanthropy media coverage and better data is needed to track representation over time.
• Women hold significant leadership roles in Australia’s largest philanthropic entities, but that leadership is not always visible in public measures and media narratives of major philanthropy within mainstream media.
• Women’s representation in the Order of Australia honours lists has declined between 2024-2026.
• The decline in women’s representation is more significant at the highest levels of recognition in the honours lists.
• Gender and cultural diversity intersect with women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds and women of colour even less proportionately represented in the honours lists.
• To sustain parity in national recognition, Australians need to nominate more women and particularly more First Nations women, more women from CALD backgrounds and more women of colour.
• Collective giving is an area of growth within Australian philanthropy. Women make up 81% of collective giving participants in Australia and play a significant and increasingly visible role within this model of giving.

1. Give to the causes and communities you care about. No matter the size, the act of giving is powerful.
2. Talk about the causes and communities you care about, and why you give — normalising giving can inspire others and amplify the impact of your gift.
3. Invite others to be part of giving communities, be it through collective or collaborative models, or the She Gives movement.
4. Include a diversity of voices in the room.
5. Nominate a woman — extraordinary women are all around us; they are doing the work; nominate them here.
6. Share this Pulse Check, the She Gives: Growing Women's Giving in Australia Report, and the work of She Gives, to grow the movement.