The importance of men in the movement
against gender inequality
Fortunately, in the last decades, men began to
participate in the movement against gender
inequality. Nowadays many people, men and
women, from all over the world are combating
gender inequality.
In the movement against gender inequality,
men are of crucial importance, according to UN
Women. On September 20th 2014, they started
the HeForShe solidarity campaign. The goal of
the HeForShe campaign, is to engage 1 million
men by July 2015.
The
HeForShe
campaign
focuses
on
discrimination and violence against women.
However, as UN Women states on
www.heforshe.org: ‘’Gender equality is not only
a women’s issue, it is a human rights issue that
requires the participation of men. Men have to
take action against all forms of violence and
discrimination faced by women and girls.’’
“Initially we were asking the question, ‘Do men
care about gender equality?’ and we found out
that they do care,” said Elizabeth Nyamayaro,
senior adviser to the executive director of UN
Women. “Then we started to get a lot of emails
from men who signed up, who now want to do
more.”
HeForShe’s accomplishments so far and its
aims for the future
In less than a
year
the
campaign has
made relatively
good progress
with
over
306,000
and
counting men
having signed up to the campaign as well as
millions of US dollars having been donated
towards the cause. It has also gained the
support of many notable celebrities including
Harry Styles, Russell Crowe and Forest Whitaker
who said that ‘empowering women empowers
us all’. Barack Obama has come out to support
the campaign too, stating that ‘lifting up women
will not only lift up the US economy; it would
also lift up the country’.
In September of 2014 the HeForShe’s campaign
launched its second initiative, entitled IMPACT
10x10x10, in Davos at the World Economic
Forum. Through this program, the campaign
aims to engage with at least 10 governments, 10
corporations and 10 universities on a global
scale to address their approaches to gender
inequality. By engaging with governments and
corporations it is hoped that women will gain
equality politically and economically by 2030.
One such corporation that has become involved
is Unilever, the world’s third-largest consumer
goods company headed by the CEO Paul
Polman. Currently 43 per cent of the
corporations managers are female but it aims to
reach parity by 2020. Meanwhile including
universities will further accelerate the process
of equality. The University of Leicester is one of
the 10 universities and has stated that it aims to
achieve 30% representation of women in
professorships by 2020, an increase of 1.5% per
annum. It has also announced a plan to
establish an annual prize for exceptional work in
the advancement of gender equality for
students and faculty.
The campaign continues to grow and grow. As
recently, on the 5th of May the University of
Waterloo joined the IMPACT10x10x10 initiative
being the 30th university to do so. Furthermore
with feminist issue appearing in the news more
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