Limitless Women

22/10/2026

A few years ago I was driving in the direction of progress.

Gender equality was the destination, Waze had the route, estimated arrival well within my lifetime.

Then it rerouted. Congestion ahead. Then the traffic stopped moving altogether. Then there was a collision and now I’m sitting in a stalled car turning the key over and over, wondering whether this thing is going to start at all. If you're Gen X you wil be screaming at me right now, that I'm going to flood my engine...I hear you.

That’s roughly where we are.

In July, UN Women surveyed 855 women’s organisations across 52 countries, the ones running the shelters, the legal aid, the maternal health outreach.

- Two in five expect to close within the year.
- Eight in ten are watching girls drop back out of school.
- One in five have suspended their work on women’s leadership specifically,

because when the money tightens somebody sorts the list into essential and optional. Guess which column we landed in?

That same month, here, Chief Executive Women (CEW) found women’s share of ASX 200 executive teams had fallen for the first time in ten years.

Different hemispheres. Same decision.

‘How Much Longer?’ is the theme for International Women’s Day 2027.

I’ve written about why it’s exactly the right question.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-much-longer-andrea-ryan-ttasc

UN Women Australia

15/10/2026

500 Downloads!

Very grateful for the love and glad it's resonating with women on the journey into their second chapter, aka Midlife!

Where we step into our power, let go of the things that no longer serve us and embrace the life we have wanted all along.

The next episode drops tomorrow, it's the last in a four part series discussing the Sustainable Development Goals, particularly Number 5, which is...you guessed it, Gender Equality and how bloody far away we are from achieving it.

Take a listen on your way to work 🎧

Buzzsprout

12/10/2026

UN Women has announced the official theme for International Women’s Day 2027.

How Much Longer?

Notice who that question is aimed at.
Not at women. Not our confidence, our visibility, or our willingness to lean into anything.

At governments. At institutions. At the people who’ve had the power to change this and haven’t.

Four years out from the 2030 deadline, not a single target under the gender equality goal is on track.

At the current rate, it takes 171 years.

How much longer, indeed.

New episode — link in bio.

06/10/2026

When did you last feel genuinely energised?

Not caffeinated. Not powering through. Not finally sitting down at 10pm once everything’s done.

Actually energised.

For a lot of women, that question produces a long pause.

The work Christmas invitations have started landing, and I’ve noticed a reaction in myself I didn’t have at 35. Not excitement. A small knot.

Drinks. Networking. Small talk. When I could be home by 9.30 with a series and a collagen hot chocolate.

Did you know

96% of Australian women rate themselves as highly competent. Higher than men rate themselves.

14% were promoted last year. Men, nearly double that.

And more than a third of women say they’re not interested in leadership at all. Not because the ambition went. Because the climb costs more than it returns.

You’re not tired because you can’t cope. You’re tired because you’ve been funding something that doesn’t pay you back.

New episode: Energy Is the New Status Symbol. Comment ENERGY and I’ll send it to you.

Platforms or pyjamas this December? 👇

14/09/2026

There's a version of this where I tell you to just break the rules. Be bolder. Speak up more.

I'm not going to do that, because it puts the whole problem back on you and you didn't build the problem.

The rules were handed to you. They were rewarded. Every time you kept one, something good happened and every time you broke one, it cost you something.

That's not a confidence issue. That's conditioning working exactly as designed.

The episode's called The Rules You Didn't Write.

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-midlife-power-shift/id1896813802?i=1000769781037

11/09/2026

The uncomfortable part isn't that you were given rules. It's how well you kept them.

07/09/2026

What do Gloria Steinem and SDG5 have in common?

The Multiplier effect.

Gloria Steinem died this week, at home in New York, aged 92. Her foundation said she worked for equality until the very end.

One thing she said has stayed with me. Real change, she said, is like a tree. Too often we think the tree grows from the top, from Congress, from the people in charge. It doesn’t. Trees grow from the bottom. From everyday people. From communities. From women who decided the thing they’d been told to accept wasn’t acceptable after all.

Her foundation asked people to light a candle for her, borrowing an old tradition of lighting signal fires on hills to show the way to the other side of the mountain.

So here’s what I’ve been thinking about all week. The women who lit those fires before us are leaving. And the mantle doesn’t just disappear. Someone picks it up.

I think that someone is us.

Not despite being in midlife. Because of it. We’ve got the clarity, the experience, and frankly the zero-tolerance for bu****it that this moment needs. We’ve spent the first chapter learning how the systems work. The second chapter is where we do something with that.

Which brings me to what’s coming.

Over the next few weeks I’m publishing a series on gender equality, SDG 5, and what’s actually happening to women’s rights right now.

Because here’s the thing most people miss: gender equality isn’t one goal sitting on its own. It’s the multiplier. Educate a girl and you change an economy. Fund women’s climate leadership and you get better solutions. Invest in women and every other promise the world made for 2030 moves with it.

Stay tuned, share this post with a woman that needs to hear it.

06/09/2026

Time to reflect on your wheel of life?

I hand this to every woman before we do anything else.

You've built the career. You carry the responsibility. On paper, your life looks sorted. But somewhere in there, a few things have been quietly sliding and you haven't stopped long enough to see which ones.

Ten minutes, and you will.

See exactly where each part of your life stands, not how it looks from the outside

Spot the one or two areas you've let slide without realising

Walk away with an honest, one-page snapshot of where you actually stand

The life wheel technique is a simple tool that helps you evaluate where you are currently and how satisfied you are in your life. It allows you to view key areas in your life such as health, finances and relationships, prioritise them and decide which areas you need to focus on to create the shift

05/09/2026

I felt stupid.

I wasn't.

My Director told me I didn't need to prepare. Then asked me, in front of everyone, for a statistic I didn't have.

After that I read every document twice. Wrote down pages I'd never need, because I couldn't know which fact he'd reach for next time.

That's not confidence. That's armour.

We call it the curse of expertise, all that certainty we build up by our forties and fifties.

For a lot of us it didn't start with expertise at all. It started with being made to feel small in a room we were told not to prepare for.

Certainty felt like safety because for a long time, it was.

Nobody ever came and told us we could stop.

So I'm telling you. 🎧 New episode out now:

https://podcasts.apple.com/au/podcast/the-midlife-power-shift/id1896813802?i=1000787728349

03/09/2026

My face when I heard that 63% of Australians think we're close to gender equality.

The number moved 0.2 points last year.

We signed up to gender equality by 2030. The UN says this year we won't make it. Nobody's going to announce it. The date will just go past.

Full piece in this fortnight's Second Chapter Brief. Link below.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/63-australians-think-were-nearly-number-moved-02-points-andrea-ryan-xylwc

UN Women Australia Women Leaders Institute