The annual conference in Sydney on Friday comes as many women are being driven out of the industry by financial pressures, stalled growth and lack of progress on gender equity.
An industry report released in June found career dissatisfaction among women in the media had risen to 59 per cent - the highest level in four years.
More than a decade after she first visited Australia to promote her book The End of Men: and The Rise of Women, journalist and podcaster Hanna Rosin is returning to headline the conference as a keynote speaker.
Rosin, a senior editor at The Atlantic, will be joined by high-profile speakers including actor and director Claudia Karvan, Minister for Women Katy Gallagher, journalist Bridget Brennan and award-winning author Shankari Chandran.
When she published The End of Men in 2012, Rosin said she believed the world could go in one of two directions.
Either gender roles would be loosened, with more men taking on roles in care and education, or there would be backlash, Rosin thought.
"When you have a rise of women, there can be a lot of backlash," she told AAP.
"The manosphere was fringe back then and we associated it with incels. Now it is mainstream."
The election of President Donald Trump for the second time has also hardened gender roles in the United States, with the administration shutting down diversity, equity and inclusion programs it says are a form of discrimination.
"It is surreal living here (in the US) now and feeling the force-back of decades of women's rights," Rosin said.
Her keynote speech will be about the changes she has observed in gender, power and politics in America in the past decade.
She will discuss how the media and workplaces have changed and the age of social media.
"The conference has caught me at a good time because a lot of American women were stunned into silence after Trump 2.0," she said.
"There was no revolt like there was in 2017 but I feel like we are all now waking up again."
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