The Creative Equity Index

In golf, the handicap system was designed to level the playing field — giving players of different skill levels a fair chance to compete. It’s not an insult. It’s recognition. You’re not starting from the same place, so the outcome is adjusted accordingly. But what if that same principle applied to real life — particularly for women? What if instead of pretending the field was level, our systems were designed to reflect reality?

We love to talk about equality. Equal pay (almost). Equal rights (on paper). Equal opportunity (if you squint). But behind closed doors — and inside workplaces — the load tells a very different story. Men, statistically, cruise through life in well-serviced vehicles: free hands, clear schedules, maybe a networking lunch or a quiet beer at the end of the day. Women? Same traffic, same expectations — except they’re towing a trailer. A metaphorical one, piled high with the unpaid, uncounted, and unrelenting demands of care: childcare, eldercare, domestic labour, emotional logistics, mental load, calendar wrangling, social obligation tracking, and the unseen negotiations that keep households — and societies — running.

By the time many women even get to work, they’ve already performed hours of unpaid labour. That’s not just a gender gap. It’s an economic gulf — and it’s measurable. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, Australian women do 60% more unpaid domestic work than men. Deloitte estimates that unpaid care work contributes $650 billion annually to the Australian economy — more than mining, manufacturing, and retail combined (Deloitte Access Economics, 2020). Yet it remains excluded from GDP, uncredited in résumés, and unreflected in most economic or workplace policy design.

This isn’t about “helping women catch up.” It’s about systemic acknowledgment. Enter the Creative Equity Index — a proposed framework that mirrors the logic of a golf handicap but with a new name and purpose. Not because women are “less capable,” but because the system itself is unbalanced. The Index proposes minimum standards for women’s participation in creative and care-informed economies, applying across employment, taxation, superannuation, funding, healthcare, and leadership. This isn’t charity. It’s policy catching up with reality.

The Creative Equity Index is based on one premise: if you account for the unpaid labour load women carry, you must also adjust the structures they are forced to operate in. Some of the standards it proposes include:

✔ Career Breaks = Professional Development Credits — Raising children or performing unpaid care is not time off. It is human capital investment. Career interruptions for caregiving should earn recognised credits under workforce and training systems, modelled on frameworks like Recognition of Prior Learning (RPL).

✔ Superannuation Top-Ups — Women retire with 23.1% less superannuation than men (WGEA, 2023). Public or employer-funded super top-ups should be implemented for any unpaid care period exceeding 6 months — aligning with international models such as Norway’s pension credits for carers.

✔ Domestic Labour Deductions — Tax systems currently reward investment property owners and high-income earners but offer almost no economic validation for unpaid care. A modest, standardised rebate or deduction for full-time caregivers could recognise mental load and emotional labour — already identified as key drivers of female burnout by VicHealth.

✔ Early Retirement Eligibility — Women who have spent decades running dual roles — paid work and unpaid domestic labour — should be eligible for retirement earlier, in line with the compounding fatigue and structural disadvantage they’ve absorbed. This would mirror gender-aware retirement models being piloted in parts of the EU.

✔ Priority Advancement Pathways — Employers should actively offset the bias of career interruptions due to caregiving. Promotion pathways must be adjusted not penalised — especially in fields like media, arts, health, and policy where the “pipeline” thins at exactly the childbearing years. Tools like the Gender Equality Audit could be integrated into sectoral performance requirements.

✔ Domestic Labour Audit Tools — Think a domestic Fitbit meets a Fair Work tracker. Simple, opt-in tools could record unpaid labour hours in cohabiting households. These would inform family law settlements, relationship counselling, and household equity coaching, shifting culture toward shared domestic responsibility. OECD data already tracks household inequality — this would localise the tool.

✔ Flexible Funding + Deadline Models — In creative industries, “deadline culture” doesn’t reflect life logistics. Grant bodies and commissioning agencies must implement rolling deadlines, flexibility provisions, and child-care subsidies as part of all major opportunities — building on frameworks like the Australia Council’s Fair Play initiative.

✔ Subsidised Respite and Live-In Support — Particularly for solo parents or high-care households. This could be funded through innovation or wellbeing grants, and treated as core creative infrastructure.

✔ Recognition of Care-as-Infrastructure — Care work should be formally included in job descriptions, board applications, and policy design. Running a household for five years? That’s executive-level logistics. We measure productivity, yet ignore the invisible productivity keeping the world spinning.

This isn’t about special treatment. It’s about correcting structural distortions. The current system is designed around a default worker with full-time availability, zero interruptions, and no care duties. That worker is a fiction — and has always been male by design. The Creative Equity Index would build the scaffolding currently missing. It would acknowledge that some people are towing a trailer. That the race hasn’t been fair. And that adjusting the start time or the conditions isn’t “lowering the bar” — it’s recognising that not everyone started from the same block.

What we need now are enforceable, measurable minimum standards for Creative Women’s Workplaces. From artist residencies to music studios to government roles, the time has come for infrastructure that reflects the real shape of women’s lives. The Creative Equity Index is not a campaign slogan. It’s a blueprint for dignity, sustainability, and actual fairness — not theoretical equality.

In a world where women hold up more than half the sky — and nearly all the unpaid care — it’s time to redesign the scaffolding.

Not as a favour. As a future