The HeForShe Cambridge gender equality movement is our University’s branch of UN Women’s Campaign aiming to engage men in the support for gender equality.
Initiated by Emma Watson at The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women Conference, on September 21st 2014, the movement has since gained global momentum. Here in Cambridge, the University is committed to supporting the campaign; in October 2015 we hosted the inaugural ‘#GetFree’ tour as part of this, which was supported by Vice-Chancellor Sir Leszek Borysiewicz.
Our goal is now to spread the word in Cambridge – that gender equality is not just a women’s issue: it is a human issue. No longer simply ‘a struggle for women by women’, only by making men and boys equal partners in this movement can we be truly effective in tackling the gender-based social, economic, and political inequalities which affect us all.
We will be hosting events, taking to social media, and publishing articles and reports to examine both the state of gender of equality in Cambridge and what members of the University can do more broadly to support the campaign. Although, undoubtedly, a great deal of progress has already been made, recent research suggests that at the current rate of change gender equality will not be achieved until 2095. We hope you agree that we cannot wait that long, and that you’ll join us to help make sure we don’t have to.
We are looking to host a variety of college based and student led events in order to gain more support for HeforShe in the student population and across Cambridge as a whole. For this to work, we are looking for a college leader in each of the colleges and it would be through that person that such events are organised.
What we would need is for you to send around an email, similar to this, asking for anyone wanting to be a college leader to either email me (toa24@cam.ac.uk) or to sign up to a GoogleDoc.