Australia
Strong on gender, silent on everything else
Australia has a mature gender-diversity regime — 30% targets, WGEA reporting, activist super funds — but almost no visibility of any other dimension. It is also the market where LGBTQ+ board disclosure was actually on the table, in the ASX’s draft 5th edition principles — and lost.
The regulatory framework
Australian listed companies report "if not, why not" against the ASX Corporate Governance Council’s Principles & Recommendations. The framework is gender-focused; the 2024–25 attempt to broaden it — the first mainstream exchange framework anywhere to explicitly name sexuality among board diversity characteristics — was withdrawn.
ASX Principles & Recommendations (4th edition, 2019)
Recommendation 1.5: listed entities should have and disclose a diversity policy, set measurable objectives for gender diversity, and disclose proportions of men and women — with a 30%-of-each-gender objective for ASX 300 boards, reported under Listing Rule 4.10.3. The Corporations Act itself requires only directors’ age and gender.
The withdrawn 5th edition
The 2024 consultation draft would have lifted the gender objective to 40% for the ASX 300 and — for the first time in any mainstream exchange framework — recommended disclosure of board diversity characteristics including sexuality. After a divisive process, 8 of the Council’s 19 members including ASX itself opposed adoption, and the draft was shelved in February 2025.
The legislated track kept moving
While the exchange framework stalled, Parliament enacted WGEA gender-equality targets (2025): employers with 500+ staff must select and meet gender targets — a menu that includes board composition — on pain of losing eligibility for Commonwealth contracts. Employer-level gender pay gaps, including CEO pay, are now published by name.
Investor levers
ACSI calls poor board diversity a financially material risk; AustralianSuper votes against chairs where boards have fewer than two female directors; HESTA runs its 40:40 Vision. Proxy-advisor diversity pressure remains active in Australia even as it was suspended in the US.
Uniquely intersectional potential
Out Leadership’s Australia guidelines are the only board diversity framework anywhere that folds First Nations leaders and veterans into board diversity, using cultural-background categories from the Australian Human Rights Commission’s "Leading for Change" blueprint.
What changed since our last report
Dated developments from mid-2024 through July 2026, compiled for the OutQUORUM 2026 cycle. Each item links to its source.
- Feb 20, 2025 WITHDRAWN
ASX Corporate Governance Council shelves the draft 5th edition
The draft — including 40% women on ASX 300 boards and disclosure of board diversity characteristics beyond gender (sexuality, disability, age, Indigenous heritage, cultural background) — failed after 8 of 19 Council members, including ASX itself and the AICD, opposed adoption. The 2019 4th edition remains in force. This is the clearest case in any market of the anti-DEI climate directly killing a diversity-disclosure upgrade.
- Mar 2025 ENACTED
WGEA gender-equality targets become law
The Workplace Gender Equality Amendment (Setting Gender Equality Targets) Act 2025 requires employers with 500+ employees to select three gender-equality targets — including, optionally, board composition — and achieve or improve against them within three years. ~2,000 employers covering 3.9 million workers are captured.
- Mar 4, 2025 ENACTED
WGEA publishes employer-level gender pay gaps — now including CEO pay
Pay gaps for ~9,200 private-sector employers were published by name, with CEO remuneration included in the calculations for the first time. Employer-level naming has proven a powerful disclosure lever, with direct analogies for board-level demographic transparency.
- Sep 2025 → PROPOSED
ASX overhauls the Principles process; new advisory group drafts simplified principles
A new Advisory Group on Corporate Governance chaired by former RBA governor Philip Lowe is drafting simplified Principles, with public consultation expected Q3 2026 — a concrete window to argue for restoring broadened diversity-characteristic disclosure, including LGBTQ+, in the next edition.
- Feb 2026 DATA
AICD: women hold 37.6% of ASX 300 board seats — and momentum is flattening
Women’s share rose from 30.5% (Dec 2020) to 38.1% (Sep 2025) before easing to 37.6%; the female share of new appointments is slowing. The "levelling off" narrative is now live in Australia.
- 2026 DATA
Deloitte Board Diversity Index finds only 4 openly LGBTQ+ directors in the ASX 300
Flat year-on-year — with researchers noting actual numbers are likely higher but undisclosed. Cultural diversity on ASX 300 boards is going backwards, while gender progress plateaus just under 40%: what got measured got managed, and what didn’t, didn’t.
Imagine if Australia could change 200 ASX companies by next year’s Sydney Mardi Gras.
The data
The ASX 200 pairs solid overall disclosure (81.6%) with the weakest LGBTQ+ visibility of any English-speaking market — board-level reporting beyond gender was described by KPMG as "almost non-existent."
ASX 200
Full dashboard →Our guidelines
LGBTQ+ Board Diversity Guidelines: Australia
Published March 2023 — Sydney WorldPride year · Sponsored by Perpetual Limited · AICD partnership since 2019
The first-ever LGBTQ+-inclusive board diversity guidelines for Australia — and the only framework anywhere explicitly inclusive of First Nations leaders and veterans, proposed as an extension of the ASX-recommended board skills matrix.
Read the guidelines at outleadership.com