An independent lab: what the numbers say, what women are actually saying, and what it costs when nobody joins the two.
Independent · Est. 2026 · First study February 2027ABS, HILDA, the Australian Longitudinal Study on Women’s Health, WGEA, AIHW. The evidence exists; nobody had put it together so it could be read across.
Interviews and a national survey, so every number has a person attached and every story has a number behind it.
Most research describes the gap and stops. We finish the sentence: a cost counted, and a decision made easier.
Women’s lives don’t exist in silos. Work, care, money, health and home press on each other constantly, and the pressure moves through the whole. Most research isolates one variable, measures it with false precision and calls it the answer. That’s tidy, but it’s not true.
Our first study looks at women in their thirties: the decade when work, care, money, health and home collide hardest.
Careers accelerate while care arrives. Mortgages, fertility, ageing parents and ambition land in the same decade. We’re studying how they press on each other, and what it costs women, employers and the country.
Short readings from the evidence as we build it: a single number, what sits behind it, and what it connects to. The first Sounding publishes in December.
Get the SoundingsWomen’s workforce participation hit a record in 2025. The question is what it displaced.
Source: Status of Women Report Card 2026For organisations that need to understand women deeply
Brands, institutions and government commission the lab to study a question about women properly: the official statistics, women’s own voices, primary research where it’s needed, and the system that connects them. Delivered as something people actually read and use.
Published findings stay independent. Commissioned work is always disclosed as commissioned.
Talk to us about a studyMatriarch Research was founded by Abby Johnston, a strategist and researcher with eighteen years across brand, culture, policy and the people on the other end of all three.