Hope Is A Verb - Inside Women Deliver 2026: Feminist Leadership, Climate Action & Youth Power

Episode Date: May 13, 2026

Gus and Amy recently attended Women Deliver 2026 – the world’s largest global conference on gender equality. Beyond reporting on the sessions, it was an opportunity to sit down with the people driving social change at every level. From feminist leaders in the Pacific to youth-led innovation, policymakers, and evolving conversations about the role of men in the fight for gender equality, Women Deliver 2026 offered a snapshot of a global movement in motion - and the tensions, ideas, and leadership shaping what comes next. In this episode:The value of global conferencesWhy the current “crisis” feels like a reckoningHow the frontlines of feminism are reshaping the PacificVanuatu and the landmark ICJ climate decisionWhy global organisations are focusing on adolescent girlsThe uncomfortable question around youth leadershipHelen Clark on why the UN Charter needs to adapt to the 21st centuryGood news in global health and women’s healthThe Melbourne Declaration on gender equalityThe State of the World’s Fathers reportA glimmer of hope from conflict zonesTimestamps:00:58 Why do we cover these conferences?03:01 Gus & Amy - same conference, different responses06:19 The legacy of gender equality conferences08:08 Oceanic feminist leadership08:48 Virisila Buadromo - Urgent Action Fund10:29 Climate is not a single-issue story11:23 Virisila Buadromo on echo chambers and global solidarity12:49 Flora Vano - ActionAid Vanuatu14:08 Climate and maternal health intersect15:16 The power of community-led solutions16:47 Vanuatu and the landmark ICJ climate ruling18:44 Renewed focus on adolescent girls19:16 Julia Fan - Director for Collective Action, Women Deliver21:06 Emily McChrystal - Restless Development22:18 Youth-led digital solutions23:38 Rethinking the UN Charter for the 21st century24:02 Helen Clark - former Prime Minister of New Zealand25:01 Good news in global health26:35 The Melbourne Declaration for gender equality28:33 Paola Salwan Daher - Women Deliver29:36 Unexpected outcomes from the Melbourne Declaration31:24 State of the World’s Fathers report31:47 “Why Women Still Can’t Have It All”33:08 Dr Taveeshi Gupta - Equimundo34:56 What’s working with fathers globally?36:38 Gary Barker - Equimundo38:31 Bright sparks from Women Deliver39:33 Anna Jarrett Rawlence - Women for Women International40:47 Final reflectionsFind Out More:👉 Women Deliver 👉 Image credit: Joburg Ballet School/ Ihsaan HaffejeeAbout Fix The News:Fix The News is a solutions-focused media platform sharing stories from the frontlines of progress - exploring what’s working in the world and the people making it happen.Subscribe & follow:If you enjoyed this episode, follow the podcast and leave a review - it helps more people find these stories.Production credits:Hosted by Angus Hervey and Amy Davoren-RoseProduced by Fix The NewsAudio production: Anthony Badolato, Hear That! This episode was produced in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Wurundjeri and Woi Wurrung peoples.

Welcome to Fix the News. I'm Amy. I'm Gus, and these are stories from the front lines of progress. All right, Amy, two weeks ago, we were both at Women Deliver, which is the world's biggest gathering on gender equality. We learned a lot about ourselves and about the world. What did you think? I mean, two weeks ago, and I'm still unpacking this one, I think the first question when I knew that we were going to do a podcast episode

because we always go into these things going, let's just see. We don't have to walk out with a podcast episode if we don't get one. Why is it so valuable for us to even be at these conferences? Yeah, that's a good question. I'm not sure why we go there because normally what we could do is we could phone someone up, have an interview with them and produce a podcast, whereas going to a conference requires us to jump in a plane and be somewhere for three days

and have to work really hard and have to figure out a whole bunch of stuff and have to interview a whole lot of people. So on paper, it makes absolutely no sense for us to go to somewhere like this. But it's a very useful way, I think, of taking the temperature and getting out amongst people

who really are on the front lines of a topic or an issue and seeing what they say, being in the same physical space as them, I know that this is wishy-washy, but feeling vibes, I think, really matters when it comes to this. And of course, because we're based in Australia, we don't often get too many chances to do that. And so when a big international conference like this comes along, world's biggest conference on gender equality, it's a great opportunity for us to talk to the people who are out there making change happen. I think for me, every time I go to one of these conferences, it completely disqualify.

disrupts the narratives in my head. So you might just end up stumbling into one room and one panel on something that you have never thought about. And even when we're interviewing people from the podcast, it's always behind a screen. And there is something that happens when you're in the room and suddenly there's so much more nuance. Things are so much more complicated and so much more complex. I always find it to be a really good reality check. So much of our newsletter content is around women and girls. Oh, yeah. But then you get into these rooms

and even in the places where we're making progress, you hear the challenges that are still coming up day-to-day. So for me, it stops me from oversimplifying some of these stories. We kept on checking in

over the course of the conference. We were doing sense-making with each other, which was great. But we had quite different responses to the conference itself. I found it pretty challenging. And I think in the days that followed the conference,

I was kind of doing a bit of soul-searching trying to figure out what that was. And I realized that one of the reasons that I'm interested in solutions journalism, one of the reasons that I started to fix the news, is that I find it very difficult and very confronting to hear about the scale of the challenges that we face in the world. And I find it difficult to be in a room to witness and to hear those stories. It's deeply uncomfortable for me.

Even though we always say, you know, this is not kumbaya, we're not blindly celebrating hope without acknowledging the problems. But I think to sit in a sustained place of witnessing injustice, difficulty, challenge, watching people call it out over the course of three days,

I found that personally very, very challenging and I got really frustrated at different times and not to overgeneralize here, but I wanted to leap straight to the solutions. And that matches up to the gender stereotypes. Yeah. And Gus, you phoned me on the Thursday morning. It was the last day of the conference and you apologised, which I was really moved by

and a little surprised by because I didn't catch that you had disconnected at all. But what was interesting is on that final morning, I was walking to the conference thinking about how comfortable I felt in that space. And the reason for it was because it's a space that I am in a lot. Outside my work at Fixer News, I actually run a women's circle, which is basically creating a space for women who don't know each other just to come together. There's always a theme. And we witness each other's stories.

We then don't have to do anything with it afterwards, which is very different to a conference. But I realized that this was like a global women's circle. In these spaces, progress can look really different. Sometimes it's an incredible innovation, sometimes it's a woman's movement, sometimes it's holding the line, and sometimes it's witnessing somebody's story. I am very happy, by the way,

to lead into all the gender differences and all the stereotypes. I understand myself a little bit better after that conference, and hopefully it starts to inform the work that I do a bit better as well. We're going to get into some of the actual specific stories we heard, some of the people that we met, but there were two words at this conference that really stood up from me. me, one of them was accountability, which I think you're going to hear a lot of the people that we

spoke to bring up. And the other word, which I thought was really interesting, and on face value, seems pretty obvious, was the word crisis, that people everywhere were saying were in crisis, but that that also had a different feeling to it, I think, than maybe that word would have had, let's say, a year ago. Yeah, I just have to let that sit for a minute. It is a true. This felt different to when I was in New York last year. That did feel like a crisis meeting. This felt more like a reckoning. We're talking about over 6,000 women from 189 countries, people that would never normally be in rooms together. And this conference is designed to be open to everyone, right? So you've got your heads of state, former world leaders, grassroots organizations,

you've got philanthropy. And it's carrying on the legacy from two really big global agreements out of the 90s, which was in Cairo, the first conference to formally recognize that reproductive rights are human rights. And then there was Beijing the year later, which was the first time that gender equality was named as a global priority. And I was really surprised seeing both of those landmark conferences were in the 90s. We're not talking about before I was born or when I was a young child. This was when I was at university.

I had all these different timelines in my head of, oh, my goodness, it's actually so recent. But over the last 30 years, have we actually made progress? And I suppose maybe this is where that word accountability comes back in. So many women were standing up and saying, this is not good enough. Do we need to rethink how we're approaching this whole problem? Yeah. And I think, too, it's really important to have a, conversation around gender equality because I think it's one of those terms like sustainability

that has started to lose some of its weight. You mention it in certain spaces and it can be met with a bit of an eye roll or a oh my goodness are we still talking about this. And for me, it brought it up to the front lines again. Amy, this is a podcast on progress. It is a podcast about solutions. What did you pick up that felt like something was changing for the better? One of my favourite phrases from this conference was oceanic feminist audacity. I remember you told me that. Yeah. This was the first time I felt the lights went on for me. It was on the second day. It was this big session around the future of funding. And this term was referenced on one of the panels.

It's from Dr. Yvonne Underhill-Sem, and it was to make people think about the Pacific, not as a whole lot of small islands that are scattered in a big ocean, but as this one big connected oceanic continent. What she says is that when you're looking at the ocean, when it's a rough day, it can look really, really scary.

And on other days, the water be still, it goes out and then the tsunami comes. Whatever is happening on the top, as feminist, we have to be like the currents that's under the water. The currents under the water are not necessarily representative of what's going on top. That's where the organizing is happening. That's where people are getting into formation.

And it doesn't have to be all showy. You don't have to be like, hey, we're making this commitment. Just do it. Stop talking about and just do it. So that's what we're doing. We're doing this work. We are controlling the current, irrespective of whatever disruption that everybody can see, that work is being done under the water.

Okay, this is very bad drama. She's one of the leading feminist and human rights voices in the Pacific. She's from Fiji. She co-leads the urgent action fund in that region, which is basically making sure that funding keeps flowing to women on the front lines of this gender equality. work. But what I love about Viri is she really cuts through how narrow the conversation about the Pacific is. Because whenever this region shows up on a world stage, whether it's at COP or at a conference like this, often it's through the lens of climate crisis, right? And what we hear

about far less are the solutions and the feminist movements that are actually driving progress on the ground. The climate crisis is an experience we all have, and we all have a perspective of it, but we don't all necessarily come at it from a climate lens. As people living in the Pacific, this is not a single story issue. So when people say to me, who's the climate defender or who is the legal reformer, all of those identities, sits with one person. It's one of the strengths of coming from small places.

It's also one of its weaknesses, because when you're not a weakness, because when you're not a lot of when we're talking to the media, our issues get oversimplified. The Pacific Ocean is the largest ocean in the world, but not all of us have a connection to the ocean. Because if you ask someone from the Highlands of Papua New Guinea, what does the ocean look like? They have no idea because they live on a mountain far away from the ocean. That single story and narrative, that's not working for us.

When it comes to gender equality, we know what the problems are. We know that there needs to be systemic change. From where you sit, what is the remedy? I think we all need to step out of our echo chambers. We keep talking to the same people and nothing moves. I used to work at an organisation in Fiji where we had a military coup. And in the first four years of our advocacy,

it got us nowhere. We wanted elections. So we had to find a way to make that happen. We had to start talking to people we didn't want to talk to, because instead of always saying they're the problem, we actually asked ourselves, maybe we're the problem too? It opened up so many opportunities.

We were able to have dialogue with people who were subjugating us. It took like six years, but we had elections. I mean, it was flawed, but people went to the polls after 16 years. I'm living proof that this can have. It does happen. Gus, I heard so many stories like this one over those three days of the conference. And there were like these tiny little sparks, you know, these reminders that even when progress feels impossible, that change can happen.

You also got a chance to connect again with the Flora Vanu, who was one of our first podcast guests, I think, in 2003. We loved our conversation with her back then. and it was wonderful to catch up with her and to see what she's been up to. Oh my goodness. If you want to talk about women delivering, spend 15 minutes with Flora Vanu. We both saw her on the big mainstage session

that was around climate, and then on the final day, I managed to catch her at the end of a round table on maternal health. And Gus, I cannot tell you the exhaustion in her eyes. But also, she has that. absolute clarity of someone who has been on the front lines. You know, Flores from Vanuatu, one of the most climate-affected countries in the world, and women have been bearing the brunt of that impact. But what Flora has done is she's changed that narrative. She's built this network

of women across the country, so all the different islands who share early warnings and coordinate disaster response and support one another, she's empowered these women to become first responders rather than victims in their communities. It speaks to your work that yesterday I saw you on a climate panel and today I see you in something for mothers and babies. Absolutely, when you look at the nexus between gender and climate crisis, you have to think who are the women giving birth?

Is it accessible to reach those? centers as a women-led organization and as a mother, we knew those are the things that we will face. We have to tell mothers, map out the village health workers. Where are they? And make sure that they are assigned into those evacuation center during emergency. So that's the work we're doing on preparedness. And I'm glad to be here, to be sitting at that round table with all this big policy people and those global lead. Because difficult places requires different measures and one-size and feed-all. I think the focus of the top-down should now turn to a bottom-up. When we spoke to you three years ago, this is what inspired us so much about your work.

You were harnessing this power that women already have, and it sounds like that's what you're also tapping into here. I think we, as women, have a lot of power. We knew the solutions on the ground, but we were not given spaces to actually talk about it. They are not spaces that invite us because we are communities. They invite people with degrees, PhDs, organizations with a lot of funds, to sit on the table and decide what we need in the community. And if we don't have ownership, then we can talk and talk and talk.

But it will be very hard to trickle down to the women that are being left out on consultation, left out on access to basic healthcare, left out on being recognized that they are there and informed them. Bringing communities to the table where these decisions are made was really a big theme of this conference. And Flora was one of the first people who really showed me that climate is not a siloed issue.

When we first spoke to her, I think she had around 6,000 women in her network. Now she has 10,000. And you feel them coming. through the door with her. I haven't actually experienced something like that before. It really blew me away. So you're saying that you experienced firsthand the power of oceanic feminist audacity? Yes. Yes, I did. Another thing which came up at the conference, which I actually wasn't expecting, was something that we reported on for the first time last year. I haven't seen it much in the news,

but it was the ruling from the International Court of Justice that polluters have an obligation to pay for the damage they have caused from climate change. This was a ruling in international law, so which means it's not necessarily enforceable at the national level, but what it does is it creates a precedent and an argument for cases to be brought now at both the regional, national and local levels against those big polluters.

That was a history-making case, and we got to chat to Flora about that as well. Yes, she was a key witness for Vanuatu in this case, and, I mean, this is, oceanic feminist audacity at its best. But what really struck me is the courage that it must take for one woman from a small island nation to step into spaces like this.

One of my colleague was like, Flora, do you know that you will pinpoint a lot of wealthy nations? I said, I need the world to hear me. If they cannot hear my government, then they listen to my stories. Because I'm not talking about books that were written A decade ago, I'm talking about my lived realities that I am facing every day. And if I do not talk, who will? I know economically a lot of wealthy countries depend on fossil fuel, and that's no job.

We are definitely hitting nails on the economic sustainability. But that's economic sustainability. Faces our life. Faces our survival, faces my home. Now, we've done that. We have won the first day. And I think it's a moment that the tears of joy flows. It just flows.

Okay, what about you, Gus? Catch me up. What rooms were you in? What were some of your insights? There was a really interesting focus on adolescent health. Policymakers, global health experts, funding bodies, governments. They've all converged on this idea that if you get it right with adolescent girls, then you get it right all the way through you.

I was in a number of different sessions where government ministers were saying, look, this is an area we're going to be focusing on now. And I got a chance to ask some of the team at Women Deliver why there is this renewed focus. My name is Julia Thun. I'm the director for collective action at Women Deliver, and I lead our advocacy work with and for adolescent girls.

So why are we talking about girls so much? If we think about adolescents, that's the time when girls, obviously, are going through a lot of hormonal and developmental changes. They have specific needs like sexual and reproductive health and rights, but also in many parts of the world. That's when girls' rights, girls' mobility, and opportunities might shrink. And unfortunately, that's true for too many girls around the world.

But if we can support girls through this distinct period of adolescence, they're much more likely to live equal lives as adult women. We can actually tackle gender inequality at the time when it starts to take root in adolescence. It's going to be a much more effective way to intervene and promote gender equality. but also, of course, for the girls that are going through this period of life, it's the right thing to do as well. This makes so much sense to me, and I've never thought about adolescents as that point

where gender equality could be interrupted. I mean, it's such a powerful idea. I think it's great that adolescent girls are a real focus of global development conversations now. But I also think that there's a deeper shift happening here, which is away from seeing young people simply as beneficiaries, you know, people that are just the recipient of our end. or our concern or programs and towards them as leaders and experts in their own communities. But I think that also raises a pretty uncomfortable question for a lot of large institutions.

Are they actually willing to share decision making? Are they actually willing to share power? And I spoke with Emily McChrystal from Restless Development, which is a group working to put youth leadership at the centre of social change. And I asked her what she thinks. many big NGOs are still getting wrong about young people. I think they don't understand how young people actually work. They see young people as like homogenous group

when actually young people are also in government and they're also experts in their own right. So that's something that we're really trying to change the dial on. They assume that young people work from really clearly organized segmented ways. But honestly, one youth-led organization could be focusing on gender justice, climate and health, in one program. It's also important.

They realize how much work young people are doing without any resources. There's this whole argument about, you know, we don't have the available funds, we don't have the investment. But if you gave young people £500, they would do so much more with that than a big NGO

because it immediately goes to the communities that need it rather than being sifted through bureaucratic processes. Emily also pointed to something else that gets overlooked a lot in conversations about youth leadership. which is the most obvious thing, innovation. Because while a lot of the public debate around young people

and technology tends to focus on the risks of online spaces, I think we forget that a lot of young people are building digital solutions of their own. One of the programs that young people have led in Kenya is called IDOC. So this is essentially an AI platform where young people can be connected to a doctor who can give them direct personal.

health advice that specifically focused on HIV prevention. So this is a way that young people can access free, safe and also anonymised healthcare. Another approach was in Nigeria, where again it was kind of using an AI system that was entirely developed by young leaders to make sure that essentially when you search the platform, you get sifted information that is accredited. So we know it's safe. We know that it's measured. This is also a... the point that I made earlier was that young people, their answer, isn't to move away from online spaces. It's to recreate those online spaces so that they're safe and they're led by them.

I've got to say, this is not something I was expecting to hear at a conference about gender equality. So often at this conference, the discussion moved from individual programs and policies into something much bigger. You know, there were so many examples of this, whether it was young people building their own digital health platforms in places like Kenya and Nigeria, or activists pushing back against top-down development models, there was this feeling that many of our global institutions are kind of struggling to just keep up,

and that goes all the way to the top, right to questions around the future of the United Nations itself. One person who was very vocal about this was Helen Clark, the former Prime Minister of New Zealand. I chatted to her briefly about why she believes we need to review the UN Charter for the 21st century. The UN Charter is stuck in time as of 1945. Lots changed since then.

Nuclear weapons, the environment, climate change, not on the agenda, little on existential threats now like artificial intelligence, as well the composition of the Security Council, the key organ which sets international legal precedence, that represents the victors of 1945 in World War II, not today's reality. So the time is well. over due for a review conference on the Charter.

One was supposed to be held in 1955 and now it's 2026. People will say this is not the time, but when is the time? Often in the worst times is when you come up with the best solutions. I think it's time to encourage an adult conversation among the world's nations on what their premier international organisation should look like. What should its mandate be? Is there anything that you can see on the horizon? if that might give us hope over the next five or ten years?

Well, I think in the health area, there's some quite exciting things, providing the funding is there to roll them out. We have a new vaccine coming for TB. Think about it. One of the world's oldest diseases. We could eliminate TB if it's deadliest infectious disease. If it's properly rolled out. Secondly, there's the breakthrough treatment,

the prophylactic for HIV, Lennkapia, a twice-yearly injectable, which is shown pretty, pretty much absolute protection against contracting HIV. This is groundbreaking. You have the opportunity to eliminate cervical cancer by attacking the virus through a vaccine. So these are all good news stories in the health field. And if we resolve to roll them out with sufficient funding, with full engagement of affected communities, we could make some big breakthroughs. Interestingly, I would say that health was one of the bright spots of this conference. And as Helen said,

With so much progress on vaccines for things like tuberculosis, the HPV vaccine, there's a general feeling that it's kind of going pretty well. That doesn't mean there aren't threats. You know, we are seen rollbacks in global aid that is going to make it harder to keep this progress up. But it also means we can start to shift our focus to other areas for women's health across the full range of ages from birth all the way through to old age. I found that really encouraging. You know, Gus, it's pretty incredible that in the last 20 minutes, we've covered climate,

innovation, adolescents and girls, a review of the UN Charter and Global Health. And I guess this just shows that when you're diving into a topic like gender equality, it's so multi-layered. There are so many threads. And I guess that is part of the value of these conferences, right? When we get this many people and ideas into one place, there's this opportunity to actually set something different in motion. And one of the big outcomes of women deliver this year was a global agreement that's called the Melbourne Declaration.

It basically pulls together all of these threads to create a roadmap that will keep the conversation on the table after everyone's gone home. And to use that word again, to keep everyone accountable and to make sure that progress happens before the next women deliver, which I think is in 2029. I guess the question is whether this declaration will actually change anything. That's the tension. Can these big ambitions deliver on these big stages at these events, can they actually deliver real world progress? Yeah. Well, I mean, this declaration has already been backed by 10 countries

from South America to Europe, Norway, Spain, Canada. And it is going to be interesting for us to track what shifts. And if any policies happen in these countries, a result. But it's the way this declaration was created and anyone can read it online. This is something I found really interesting. So the women delivered team went out and had consultations with hundreds and hundreds of women in different parts of the world. And I managed to catch up with Pala Sawa Dawa, who is one of the directors for collective action and she was sitting in on all of these consultations. And I started off by asking her,

whether we are winning or losing when it comes to gender equality. We need to remind ourselves that within all the noise, feminist movements have managed to realize incredible gains on sexual and reproductive health and rights and on women's rights. Over the last 25 years, we have seen constant liberalization of abortion laws in different countries and in different contexts. And on this issue, the U.S. is the outlier, because it's the main country that has backped.

That being said, the world is at a critical moment. So I don't know if we're winning or losing. I think we're still in the battle, which is great, because that means that we haven't lost, but it's also a call to action. And I think this is something that Women Deliver has tried to do with the Melbourne Declaration for Gender Equality. We asked ourselves, what is it that we need to do

to respond to this particular political moment? So when you were going through these consultations, Was there anything that you were hearing that you weren't expecting? That's an interesting question. I think it wasn't necessarily surprising, but it was glaring. There was an element of universality in terms of what people were calling for and what type of systems they wanted to address. And the data that we have is really interesting.

Economic justice came first. I'm Lebanese, so I can speak to my own expectations that I had going into. to the consultation in Beirut, where I thought it was going to be conflict and occupation and genocide that was going to be front and centre. And even in these conversations, it was economic justice. So economic justice, what would that look like if we started to move toward that and to really make progress? We would start seeing the burden of care work that is currently disproportionately on women and girls being alleviated. It would look like a society where people have access to education, where people have access

to health, and therefore they can breathe a little to actually devote themselves to the role that they can fulfill in the society. I think that this is what I would like to see. And I've been a feminist activist my whole life. And what always gives me hope are the rooms where feminists gather. Even the most difficult of rooms, even if they're true. trigger me or activate me at the end, I'm like, what a privilege, you know. I love this conversation with Parla.

And that last part about what the world could look like, I think it's so important for us to keep remembering the possibilities. The other thing I really remember was you phoning me on the Thursday morning after I left with my tail between my legs, huffing and puffing about the fact that there weren't enough solutions. And you said, oh my gosh, I have just come away from the launch of the service. state of the father's report, something that you might not expect to find a conference on gender equality. And it was something of a revelation. Yeah, this was one of those full circle moments.

You know, back in 2012, I read that incredible piece by Ammarie Slaughter in the Atlantic, and it was called Why Women Still Can't Have It All. It's like one of those books or movies that you remember where you were when you read it because it completely rearranged the way you think about something forever, I can still picture the desk I was sitting at when I read that article. And of course, it became one of the most read articles and reignited this whole global debate about gender equality. But what stuck with me the most was her argument that until we value the role of caregivers, regardless of whether they're men and women, we are not going to have gender equality. So fast forward to 2026 and I'm here at Women Deliver and this incredible organisation

called Equamundo launch the state of the world's father's report. Over the last decade it's been happening every three years and tracking the progress and this most recent one shows that men today really want to be part of caregiving and I spoke with the director of research for this report, Dr. Tavishi Gupta. We have been very lucky to have seen state of the world's mothers, still of the world's children. People really understand what's happening with the most disadvantaged and marginalized populations in the world. And we were very inspired in 2015 by that,

but also recognizing that we can't keep putting the double burden on women and mothers and children to be the ones who are empowered and who make the change alone. So how do we bring fathers, brothers, husbands, sons to become allies in the gender equality movement. We actually began with the idea that are they equitable caregivers? How do we make them equitable caregivers? And we were pleasantly surprised that fathers want to be involved. Maybe not equitable right away. We know there's a gender care gap all over the world. But we realized the idea of fatherhood is important to men. And we felt a

responsibility to bring that to the world and make it evidence-based so that people can understand there's something going on with barriers to that particular desire. There's something going on with workplaces, with family attitudes that treat fathers who want to be caregivers with perhaps a little bit of stigma. And over the past 10 years, what we've seen is it's become an advocacy tool to shift the narrative around what it means to be an involved father today. I think that this is a small part of much bigger conversation around masculinity and about gender roles in 2006,

and indeed in the 21st century, an area where I think we are starting to see shifting attitudes, but at the same time, those attitudes are kind of going to opposite directions. We're seeing a regression in views around gender roles in some parts of the world, but in many other parts of the world are kind of balancing out and a growing equality between gender roles.

What is working is the fact that culture is shifting. We are seeing shows like Ted Lasso, where we see this man who's emotionally expressive, who's open with his ideas, wants to be a good father, and is feeling that tension of not being around his son. There is a cultural shift across the world. Women are seeing that shift too.

85% of mothers agree that it's more normal for men to do care work today than their previous generation. This is in Turkey, South Africa, Argentina, Chile, countries that you wouldn't immediately think this is true in. And I think that is really something we need to hold on to really strongly that there's a cultural shift. The structures and the policies have not kept up. And if we don't continue to shift the structures, we're going to lose any gains we've made in the cultural shift as well. I feel really encouraged that the conversation has gotten to that point, that we could not have been having that conversation 10 years ago.

I think 10 years ago everyone was still pointing fingers at each other, whereas now it feels like something has shifted. and we can now get into my preferred space, which is the solution. There was so much good myth-busting in it as well. You know, so often we hear about the Nordic countries. They have incredible both maternal and paternal paid leave. But what this report highlighted is that a lot of men aren't actually accessing that full amount of leave. There is this big shift away from women blaming men for not doing,

enough to the systems are not supporting either men or women, and that's what's got to change. And I actually got a chance to chat with Gary Barker, who's the CEO, because through the press conference, something he said was we have to stop calling this a crisis. If we think of a crisis as a temporary moment, this seems structural and chronic. It feels so baked into work systems and an economy that doesn't center care. So the solutions have got to be structural, and they've got to last for a long time. How do we change? Workplace policies, leave policies that are adequate, a sense in the world that I'm going to be okay financially,

and I'm going to be okay financially if I have children, and if I have elder care that I have to worry about. A sense of precarity, how much families feel the world supports them or not, in their roles as caregivers. And that feels off the chart in terms of just how unwell they feel. I think more and more people are saying, okay, the way that we're doing this is not sustainable. Even if you have both men and women doing their fair share, the way that we have set up our families, the way we have set up our economies, the way we have set up infrastructure, the way that our lives are set up, just don't work for people to have kids. And as a result, well, that's one of the big reasons for the fertility crisis.

in many parts of the world. That is a much bigger conversation that we should probably pick up somewhere else. But I thought it was really interested to see it reflected partially in this release here of the state of the world's father's report. The one takeaway

is that the way things are structured are not working for families. And if we say that the children are the future, then we really have to start taking care of the people who are taking care of them. You know, I think a lot of this conference was not easy. In the rooms, there was an exhaustion. There was this having to continue to fight.

But one of the brightest sparks for me was that I caught up briefly with an incredible organization called Women for Women International. So when you talk about conflict and crisis, they work with women in war zones. And their whole job is to give them the skills, the income, the confidence, and the rights to basically rebuild their lives.

So they did a survey not long ago with over 6,000 women in these places where the lights have gone out. So we're talking Palestine, Sudan, the DRC, and they asked the question, if these women have hope that their situations will improve in the next five years. Have a listen to the result. So we wanted to prove that it's possible to consult with these women

and that their priorities must be shaping agendas. But one thing that really stayed with us is we asked the 6.5,000 women, do they have hope that their situations will improve in the next five years? And across all contexts, the average was 82% of women had hope that their situations would improve. And I find that statistic so powerful

because in order to have hope that your situation will improve, you also must have a feeling that you can be a part of bringing that hope. And so when we're coming to spaces like Women Deliver, where the core tagline change calls us here. We're trying to think about ways that we can do justice to that hope and match it with action. That is the most extraordinary statistic. It says something more than we ever could, which is that if there are women in these places who have hope, then all the rest of us, I think, need to have it, need to embody this idea that things can get better. It's something worth bearing your mind when it feels like things might be going backwards.

just to remember that in the darkest places, there is the most hope. And it's something I will keep on thinking about for a long time. From what I saw in those three days in Melbourne, there are a lot of incredible women and there are a lot of good men who are really driving this change. And they are playing a long game. There are no quick fixes here. There are no quick fixes.

One of my favourite quotes from the conference, And this has been used in this space a lot, but I really feel like it's worth mentioning and it's from the author Arundati Roy. And she says, Another World is not only possible. She is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.

Love that quote. Yeah. And at this conference, that other world really did feel like a woman. Or certainly a world that will be brought about through the actions of the incredible woman who were in that space. We know there are a lot of podcasts out there. It means a lot to us that you chose this one. It's made possible by our paying subscribers.

So if you're one of them, a big thank you. And if you want to support what we do, you can find us at fixthenews.com. This show was produced by Amy Rose with audio by Anthony Badalato from Here About. It was made in Australia on the lands of the Gadigal, Morundry and Woiwerung peoples.

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