The Importance
of HeForShe
A GLOBAL MOVEMENT DEALING WITH GENDER EQUALITY CAN GERMINATE
ANYWHERE, FROM LARGE GLOBAL COMPANIES TO THE SMALLEST OF BUSINESSES
Elizabeth Nyamayaro was only eight years old when a fam-ine
hit her small village in Zimbabwe. It had been two days
since her last meal when she met, what she describes, as a
“beautiful African woman wearing a blue uniform,” (as it
turns out, a U.N. aid worker). The woman handed her a bowl of
porridge telling her, “As Africans, we must all uplift each other.”
And so the journey began for Nyamayaro, who currently serves
as senior adviser to the executive director of U.N. Women. Two
years after her story began, at the age of 10, she was shipped by her
family to a nearby city, where she said she experienced three types
of bias: racial inequality, gender inequality and social inequality.
Her goal was to become one of those people in the “blue uni-form”
to help serve others and contribute to uplifting more than
half of the world’s population – women and girls. Some years lat-er,
after moving to London, and after taking an unpaid research
internship with the U.N., Nyamayaro moved into a full-time po-sition
with the U.N.
“It became clear to me that to uplift more than half of society,
we must uplift all of society,” she said. “Because gender equality
requires a whole of society response. It is a new paradigm, but it
is a better paradigm.”
This, she says, was the basis for creating HeForShe – a solidari-ty
movement. On Sept. 20, 2014, along with goodwill ambassador
Emma Watson, the U.N. launched HeForShe. Nyamayaro says
that in three days, more than 100,000 men answered the rallying
call and in five days at least one man in every single country in the
world joined the movement, generating more than 1.2 billion con-versations
on social media.
In a nutshell, HeForShe is a solidarity campaign for the ad-vancement
of women initiated by U.N. Women. Its stated goal is
to engage men and boys as agents of change by encouraging them
to take action against negative inequalities faced by women and
girls. Grounded in the idea that gender equality is an issue that af-fects
all people – socially, economically and politically – it seeks to
actively involve men and boys in a movement that was originally
conceived as “a struggle for women by women.”
Nyamayaro stated that although the rallying cry was being tak-en
up on college campuses and in small ways, more action was
required. So in January 2015, at the World Economic Forum in
Davos, Switzerland, the HeForShe Impact 10x10x10 initiative
equality
was launched. This was conceived as a top-down partnership with
10 heads of state, 10 global CEOs and 10 university presidents.
Their mission is to achieve gender equality by 2020. Therefore,
transparency and gender data must be released by these organiza-tions
on an annual basis. The organizations have been tasked with
achieving pay parity, gender equality at executive levels and ending
child marriage, for example.
Since then, companies like McKinsey & Company have re-leased
gender data for the first time in its almost 100-year history
and PwC’s female leadership has risen from 20 per cent to now
47 per cent.
GETTING THE GLOBAL WORD OUT
Kelly Joscelyne, global talent manager with PwC, a staunch sup-porter
of HeForShe, said, “We simply cannot empower woman
and girls without engaging men and boys.” And after PwC leader-ship
saw and heard Emma Watson’s speech at the U.N., it decided
Cecil Bo Dzwowa/Shutterstock.com
A group of women carrying sacks full of farm produce on their
heads in Chiredzi, Zimbabwe
By Joel Kranc
HRPROFESSIONALNOW.CA ❚ APRIL 2017 ❚ 29