HeForShe

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HeForShe

Formation	20 September 2014 (2014-09-20)
Founder	UN Women
Key people	Emma Watson Elizabeth Nyamayaro Winston Duke Édgar Ramírez[1]
Parent organisation	UN Women
Website	heforshe.org

HeForShe, often referred to as He for She, is a solidarity movement for the advancement of gender equality initiated by the United Nations. Grounded in the idea that gender inequality is an issue that affects all people, socially, economically and politically, HeForShe is a global effort that seeks to involve men and boys in achieving equality by taking action against negative gender stereotypes and behaviors.^[2] Its logo represents the union of women and men working together to achieve gender equality, by joining together aspects of both the female and male symbols.^[3]

Since its launch at the United Nations on 20 September 2014 by UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and UN Women Global Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson, millions of men from around the world including Heads of State, CEOs, and global luminaries have committed to gender equality. On the HeForShe website, a geo-locating map records the global engagement of the movement through counting the number of men and women around the world who have taken a pledge for the HeForShe initiative, registering over 2.1 million online commitments worldwide.^[4]

When launching the movement in September 2014, Global Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson delivered an address at the United Nations Headquarters in New York City, mainly focusing on the personal and professional motivation for establishing HeForShe.^[5] The speech went viral and currently has 3.8 million views on YouTube.^[6]

HeForShe illustrates the need for male allyship by pointing to studies that show 257 more years will be necessary to close the gender gap,^[7] and that 95% of the world's CEOs and heads of states are men.^[8][9] They argue the commitment of men with power and privilege can be a major factor for gender equality, and hope that the human stories as well as scalable, proven solutions will provide a roadmap to progress and help to shape the men's movement for gender equality.^[10]