A Little Help From Our Male Counterparts
The HeForShe campaign (http://heforshe.org/) was started in the United Nations by the United Nations’ Women’s Foundation. In this campaign, endorsed by actor Matt Damon, actor/singer Antonio Banderas, actor Patrick Stewart, and others, men are asked to spread awareness about and to attempt to put an end to gender inequality. If we can focus on getting all men to respect women then we can potentially fix the root problem of this situation. This isn’t to say that women need to rely on the support of men in order to be ambitious, but the fact of the matter is that women occupy this earth just as men do and getting them on board is a huge step in the right direction. No one gender is in this alone; we need to be supportive of each other in order to grow as a society. Created around the same time as the “Ban Bossy” campaign, the HeForShe campaign has striking similarities to the “Ban Bossy” campaign. The ultimate goal of both campaigns is gender equality; they just have different ways of obtaining this goal. The “Ban Bossy” campaign aims to achieve this goal by encouraging women to come together and to encourage other women to strive for success; whereas, the HeForShe campaign is aimed towards men in the hopes that they will make a stand for women. Both campaigns share the admirable goal |
of, one day, having all mothers, daughters, and sisters become just as successful as all fathers, sons, and brothers.
There are some articles floating around on the internet, such as this one from Forbes (http://www.forbes.com/sites/85broads/2014/03/19/better-ban-bossy-campaign-that-stars-men/), that voice opinions suggesting that the HeForShe campaign may be better than the “Ban Bossy” campaign. This article goes on and on about how the HeForShe campaign is more inclusive, but how is a campaign aimed towards one gender over the other considered to be more inclusive? The HeForShe campaign is not asking for the help of women to move it forward; it is clearly only seeking out the help of men. While I support this campaign and believe that it’s a great idea to get the views of men on this topic, I wouldn’t necessarily consider it more inclusive. In the closing paragraph of this article, it states that the HeForShe campaign “encourages men—the powered gender—to leave the door open and the ladder down for those not in power.” Unfortunately, an attitude like this, one that assumes men hold all of the power, is likely to get us nowhere in either of these campaigns. Please see my Videos page (http://banbossy.weebly.com/videos.html) to watch an introduction to the HeForShe campaign. |