World leaders announced in support for HeForShe

World leaders and new universities and companies have now been announced – alongside the University of Leicester – for the UN’s HeForShe campaign.

In May, Professor Paul Boyle, President and Vice-Chancellor of the University of Leicester, announced that he had joined UN Women’s HeForShe solidarity movement as an IMPACT 10x10x10 champion, making University of Leicester one of 10 universities around the world committing to take bold, game-changing action to achieve gender equality within and beyond their institutions.

This work will be done in partnership with UN Women, the United Nations entity dedicated to gender equality and the empowerment of women. On 20 September 2014, UN Women introduced HeForShe, which aims to mobilise one billion men and boys in support of gender equality. Launched at a press conference at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in January 2015, HeForShe’s IMPACT 10x10x10 programme engages 30 key leaders across three sectors - the public sector, private sector and academia. All 30 IMPACT champions have made common commitments and have also developed tailored commitments, formally reviewed by an expert team at UN Women and approved personally by the Executive Director of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

The University of Leicester has committed to develop and implement a gender sensitisation curriculum for students (training initiatives, designed to help students better understand gender issues in society), faculty and staff (including a mandatory orientation for all new students), along with programs that will address gender-based violence. It has also agreed to meet frequently with other IMPACT champions, to transparently measure and report on progress, to share best practices and to engage other universities to take up this cause.

Leicester was the first UK university to be announced as part of the campaign and Oxford now joins Leicester in the programme.  Other new members  are Georgetown University (USA – Washington D.C.); University of Sao Paulo ; Sciences Po (France – Paris Institute of Political Studies)’; Stony Brook University (USA – New York).

The Universities that had already been announced were:

University of Leicester

University of Hong Kong

Nagoya University (Japan)

University of Waterloo (Canada)

University of the Witswatersrand (South Africa)

Companies in this launch:

Twitter

Barclays

McKinsey & Company

Schneider Electric

Vodafone

World leaders in this launch:

Sauli Niinistö, President of Finland

Sigmundur Davíð Gunnlaugsson, Prime Minister of Iceland

Joko Widodo, President of Indonesia

Shinzo Abe, Prime Minister of Japan

Arthur Peter Mutharika, President of Malawi

Klaus Iohannis, President of Romania

Paul Kagame, President of Rwanda

Stefan Löfvén, Prime Minister of Sweden

Previously launched companies:

Accor Hotels

PricewaterhouseCoopers

Unilever

Koc Holding

Tupperware Brands

More information:

• Time Magazine: Twitter, Vodafone, and Georgetown University All Commit to Gender Equality
• Time Magazine: These 8 World Leaders Are Taking Major Steps Towards Gender Equality
• University of Leicester HeForShe website
• Opinion piece by President and Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Boyle on HeForShe