Men and Boys Working Towards Gender Equality


We don’t know how we missed this! The first Global Symposium on Engaging Men and Boys in Achieving Gender Equality took place this week in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, concluding today. One of the things that came out of the conference was a Declaration and Call to Action. Here’s a snippet:

We come from eighty countries. We are men and women, young and old, working side by side with respect and shared goals. We are active in community organizations, religious and educational institutions; we are representatives of governments, NGOs and the United Nations. We speak many languages, we look like the diverse peoples of the world and carry their diverse beliefs and religions, cultures, physical abilities, and sexual and gender identities. We are indigenous peoples, immigrants, and ones whose ancestors moved across the planet. We are fathers and mothers, daughters and sons, brothers and sisters, partners and lovers, husbands and wives.
What unites us is our strong outrage at the inequality that still plagues the lives of women and girls, and the self-destructive demands we put on boys and men. But even more so, what brings us together here is a powerful sense of hope, expectation, and possibility for we have seen the capacity of men and boys to change, to care, to cherish, to love passionately, and to work for justice for all.

While I’ve seen so many great local efforts by men working towards gender equality (like on college campuses, in organizational programs, etc.), to see activism on a global level like this is incredible. Check out the rest.

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