Women in leadership 1:28 · Transcript included
Simone Clarke, CEO of UN Women Australia, on why we’re all on the Same Side.
Simone Clarke leads UN Women Australia. We talk about keeping women’s careers moving through big life changes, why a women’s organisation is taking on the manosphere, and how the Same Side campaign is helping parents and partners talk to young men about respect for women.
Interviewed by Jess Wilson · Influential Women Series · The Pillars, Sydney · September 2026
Three things that stood out.
- 01Careers need room to pause and progress. Women often step away to have children and want to come back to a C-suite or board seat. Keeping skills intact while technology and AI reshape work is what makes that comeback possible.
- 02The manosphere is a women’s issue. People ask why a women’s organisation would care about the manosphere. Simone’s answer: it creates a disparaging view of women and shapes how women are treated.
- 03We’re all on the same side. UN Women Australia’s Same Side campaign is building what Simone calls the “humanosphere”: helping parents, partners and men talk about respect for women, the value women bring, and every woman being safe, everywhere and always.
Full transcript
Lightly edited for readability.
Jess Wilson: It is so unique to women as well, isn’t it? Because, you’re right, people do a lot of the time take a break to have children, and they might want to come back and then have a C-suite role, or a board seat role, or whatever it might be. But keeping those skills intact, and also progressing as the world changes as well, with everything that’s happening in technology and AI and all these things, right?
Jess Wilson: Yeah, and also how the landscape is just moving and shifting around us. I know there’s a lot of conversation around the manosphere, and it’s something that, when we look at our young boys, is so important. And also the mothers of these young boys, right? Like how we equip just humans to handle this, you know, phenomenon that’s happening in front of us that is not overly great.
Simone: Absolutely. And the, you know, manosphere is something that’s incredibly concerning. And often people think, why would a women’s organisation be concerned about the manosphere? Because we know that what it is creating is a disparaging view of women, and how women are treated.
Simone: And what we are hoping to create is the antidote to the manosphere. We’re calling it the humanosphere, but it’s through a campaign called Same Side, which is really about the fact that we’re all human beings, we’re all on the same side. We all need to work together, and if we do, then we can survive and thrive.
Simone: And so what we also know is that for parents in particular, to have those conversations with young boys, there’s not a lot of great role models out there for young men to follow and to aspire to be. So who do they look to? And how do we have conversations with our sons, and our husbands and our partners, and with men in general, about respect for women, the value that women bring, and also, by extension, the fact that every woman should be safe, everywhere and always?