Top stories from the week! Pauline Hanson is abolishing things, everywhere, wants monoculturalism, claims the gender pay gap is a myth etc. Plus, how 12 hours risked reproductive rights in Australia.

River Ahmad becomes the first Afghan woman to summit Mount Everest, and how Cape Verde's goalkeeper Vozinha out-classed a US$60 million masculinity spectacle.

Have you heard of career minimalism? We unpack the latest workplace trend and why it's fine, for some people.

This week's discussed stories include:

• River Ahmad, the first Afghan woman to climb Everest, dedicates historic achievement to women and girls
• A goalkeeper wept, a fighter sledged Michelle Obama. Only one of these men showed strength
• Basically, Pauline Hanson wants to abolish a bunch of things
• An alarming 12 hours of efforts to restrict reproductive health in Australia
• Jane Fonda, Julia Roberts take on Trump at free speech concert in NYC

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and head to womensagenda.com.au for the full stories.

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This week, two genuine wins and a look at who we blame when the going gets tough.

A blood-stained front page across three South African newspapers turned period poverty into front-page news — and went global. Brittany Higgins was named Executive Director of Vida Fund, stepping into a leadership role as the organisation gears up for 2028. We unpack "masculinism" — the force Helen Lewis says is uniting the right against women — and ask whether Australia is catching the same trend. Tarla takes on one comedian's irresponsible anti-immigration rant.

This week's discussed stories include:

• Blood-stained front page sparks global conversation about period poverty
• Brittany Higgins appointed Executive Director of Vida Fund as organisation ramps up gender equity campaign
• 'Masculinism' unites the right in the US against women. Is Australia experiencing the same trend?
• Dave Hughes loves a rant. This anti-immigration one is his worst yet.
• I spent 20 years as a political staffer. Here's why toxic workplace culture is so hard to fix

Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts, and head to womensagenda.com.au for the full stories.

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Sarah Wilson has built a career on telling uncomfortable truths, including about sugar, anxiety, and about how we're living. Her new book, I Eat the Stars: How to Live Fully and Beautifully in a Collapsing World, goes further than anything she's written before. It argues we are already inside systemic collapse and experiencing the same pattern every complex civilisation before us has followed. The way through is to stop performing hope and start experiencing the world around us./

In this conversation with Angela Priestley, Sarah explains what "collapse" actually means, why women may be uniquely placed to lead through it, and what she calls "fierce mother energy" — the antidote to the "fierce toddler energy" of the men currently running the world. She also tackles the question every parent is asking: how do we talk to our kids about this?

It is, against all odds, a hopeful listen.

I Eat the Stars is out now in Australia and New Zealand via Penguin, with global release on 16 June 2026.

The Women's Agenda Podcast is produced by Agenda Media, publisher of Women's Agenda. Sign up to our free daily news update here.

Thank you to this week's sponsor of the podcast, The Women in Leadership Summit. You can find out more about the event and here.

Our partner's message: Leadership isn’t built in a single moment - it’s built through momentum. In partnership with UN Women Australia - The Women in Leadership Summit is coming to a city near you this September. Australia’s Queen of Comedy, Celeste Barber, headlines a lineup of leaders worth clearing your calendar for. Forget the one-off event - this is a leadership journey, designed to build momentum before, during and after the Summit. Every ticket also directly supports UN Women Australia's work advancing women's economic empowerment, leadership and safety. Find out more and register at australia.womenleadersummit.com.

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Antoinette Lattouf went from award-winning journalist to the unwilling face of one of Australia's most consequential press freedom cases — and a verb.

In her new book Women Who Win, she reframes what winning actually means for women and what it costs, weaving in her own story of being sacked three days into a gig at the ABC and taking the ABC to court.

Antoinette joins the pod to share why she claimed the win before the verdict came down, the loneliness of being the first, and the two years she spent in fight-or-flight while navigating the case. She outlines some of the inspiring and gameschanging stories of women presented in her book.

You can learn more about Antoinette's book here.

The Women's Agenda Podcast is produced by Agenda Media, publisher of Women's Agenda. Subscribe to our free daily news update here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We wrap a week of wins and the giant gap in who says they're supporting women and who actually is.

Women and girls are driving a record philanthropic boom in Australian sport, with more than $22.8 million directed into their programs last year. Melbourne writer Su Dharmapala's debut novel is heading to the big screen as a women-led rom-com, twelve years in the making.

But in the week since the Federal Budget, five women and two children have been killed, while the Prime Minister insists he's "throwing everything" at the crisis. Schools are being blackmailed by cyber criminals using sexually explicit AI deepfakes of students. And EY has quietly walked back its once-celebrated paid parental leave policy, introducing a penalty for staff who resign within a year of returning.

We also explore this week's much-discussed issue of women urging other women to use AI.

This week's discussed stories include:

• Women and girls record philanthropic boom in Australian sport
• Melbourne rom-com about Sri Lankan community heads to big screen
• Five women, two children killed since Budget. But PM claims they're 'throwing everything' at the issue
• Schools are being blackmailed with explicit AI deepfakes of students
• After years of progress, EY is taking a step backwards on paid parental leave

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Dr Taveeshi Gupta is the lead researcher behind The State of the World's Fathers 2026, Equimundo's tracking study of global fatherhood, which has been run every two years since 2015.

The just-released 2026 edition surveyed 8,000 parents across 16 countries, and the headline finding is striking: in just three years, between 2023 and 2026, attitudes about who should do care work have measurably gone backwards. The number of fathers who think boys shouldn't be taught to change a nappy has almost doubled.

In this conversation, recorded live at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne, Taveeshi sits down with Women's Agenda's Angela Priestley to unpack the data, the contradiction between what fathers want and what they believe, the trap of the "wallet dad" identity, and the surprising political constituency that nobody is currently organising: fathers who say they'd pay higher taxes for public care services, at a higher rate than mothers do.

Backlash Conversations is a Women's Agenda Podcast series, recorded live at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne. Check out more from the series in the feed.

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Teresa Zapeta is a Maya Indigenous leader from Guatemala and the Executive Director of the International Indigenous Women's Forum, a global network that has spent 25 years building Indigenous women's movements capable of holding democracies together when state institutions fail.

In 2023, her movement was central to the 106-day resistance that protected Guatemala's democratic transition. A successful, violence-free campaign with lessons for any movement committed to protecting such things.

In this conversation, recorded live at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne, Teresa sits down with Women's Agenda's Angela Priestley to talk about the funding gap that sees just 1.4% of global women's grant-making reach Indigenous women's organisations, why "care as leadership" is a counter-strategy to authoritarianism rather than just a value statement, and what global feminist media — including Women's Agenda — keeps getting wrong about Indigenous women's leadership.

Backlash Conversations is a Women's Agenda Podcast series, recorded live at Women Deliver 2026 in Melbourne. Check out more from the series in the feed.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Binaifer Nowrojee is the first female president of the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, and the source of more than $24 billion in funding to human rights causes worldwide.

A human rights lawyer by training, her early work documenting sexual violence in Rwanda helped secure the first ever convictions for rape as a weapon of war.

Open Society is now itself a target of the Trump administration's attacks on US civil society. If those attacks become illegal restrictions on their rights, she says, they'll see the administration in court.

Binaifer offers a strong and compelling take on the manosphere, the moment we're in globally, and the opportunity for Australia to play a leading role.

She is fiercely determined, even while at the centre of an organisation under sustained attack.

She speaks with Angela Priestley for this conversation, recorded live at Women Deliver in Melbourne in April 2026. You can check out more of our 'Backlash Conversations' in the Women's Agenda Podcast feed.

Check out more from Open Society Foundations here.

The Women's Agenda Podcast is produced by Agenda Media, also publisher of Women's Agenda. You can sign up for our free daily news update here.

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She's here to hold the line on big tech power, and the world's first eSafety Commissioner Julie Inman Grant is showing no signs of backing down.

Julie Inman Grant features in our latest series of Backlash Conversations, recorded live at Women Deliver in Melbourne.

She shares why she believes the social media ban in Australia is a long game, the success achieved and the work that's still to be done.

And she outlines what she describes as "outrage", a vicious cycle of content online that sucks in people of all ages, but is especially problematic for young people.

As for how the regulation is working to hold tech platforms to account, she says: "Some companies will come to the table, and some will see us in court."

Women's Agenda is running Backlash Conversations all week, featuring short interviews recorded from our exhibition space at Women Deliver in Melbourne in April 2026.

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Just six weeks ago, Maria Antonieta Alcalde stepped up to take on one of the toughest gigs globally: leading the International Planned Parenthood Federation at arguably one of its most challenging times in history.

But with three decades of successfully fighting for women's rights across Latin America, she's got the experience and energy to take on the role, as funding cuts, the Trump administration, and a well-funded network globally are pushing to roll back hard-fought rights.

Maria was recently in Melbourne for Women Deliver 2026, where she met with Women's Agenda's Angela Priestley to record this conversation live.

This is the first of our Backlash Conversations, featuring some of the biggest global leaders fighting for women's rights.

Maria shares what the world can learn from Latin America's grassroots playbook, why she rejects the term "backlash" to describe the global rollback of women's rights, and what Australia's $49 million in family-planning aid is actually achieving across the Pacific.

Plus, the incredible gains she believes Australian women can help achieve for our sisters across the Pacific.

The Backlash Conversations is a Women's Agenda Podcast series, recorded live at the Women Deliver conference in Melbourne. New episodes drop across the next week.

The Women's Agenda Podcast is produced by Agenda Media, the publisher of Women's Agenda. Sign up to our lunchtime daily news update here.

Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.