Modern women, outdated systems: living with policies that lag behind

International Women’s Day passed earlier this month discreetly for many women connected to defence. Not because the day lacks meaning, but because the systems that shape their lives remain stuck in another era.

Australia in 2026 bears little resemblance to Australia in 1950. Most women now work, lead, earn, parent, care and contribute in ways that would have been unimaginable when many of our veteran family policies were first written. Yet those policies still assume a world where women are dependants, secondary actors, or invisible altogether.

Defence and veteran partners are still predominantly women. They are the ones who move repeatedly to support service, who absorb career disruption, who manage households through absence, injury and transition, and who carry the emotional and practical weight of service long after uniforms are hung up. What was once framed as “supporting the serviceman” has become a system that relies on women’s unpaid labour for it to function. They do this as contributors in their own right, not as an extension of someone else’s role. Our support system does not recognise that reality.

International Women’s Day is about calling out systems that no longer reflect how women live. For defence and veteran families, including widows of veterans, the gap between lived experience and policy design is stark. Despite decades of social, economic and workforce change, family policy in the veteran system has barely moved. The result is a framework that recognises women only when crisis strikes, or when loss occurs, rather than acknowledging the cumulative impact of service over time.

This is an essential question of relevance. When systems fail to keep pace, responsibility shifts from institutions to individuals, turning structural gaps into personal sacrifice, most often carried by women.

Change begins by listening to women who live this reality every day. It means modernising policies so they reflect contemporary families, shared economic responsibility, and the real impact of service on partners and children. It means recognising that supporting defence families is not a by product of veteran care, but a policy responsibility in its own right.