A few weeks after Emma Watson's highly-publicised UN speech on feminism, Iceland has joined the struggle for women's rights – by organising an all-male UN conference on gender equality.
That's right; only guys will be invited to the summit in January, which will have a special focus on tackling violence against women. Associated Press reports that the "unusual conference" is part of the HeForShe campaign spearheaded by Watson, which aims to get 100,000 men and boys involved in the fight for equal rights by 2015.
Icelandic foreign minister Gunnar Bragi Sveinsson described the meeting convened by his country and Suriname as a "Barbershop conference", saying that the intention was "to bring men and boys to the table on gender equality in a positive way". According to last year's Global Gender Gap Report, Iceland is currently highest-ranked in the world for gender equality.
"This will be a unique conference as it will be the first time at the United Nations that we bring together only men leaders to discuss gender equality," Sveinsson said, because obviously an all-male gathering of important leaders is completely unusual and not, say, par for course in most of the developed world.
Somehow, I don't think this was what Watson meant when she told men that gender equality was their issue too.
Depressingly, UN Women executive director Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka doesn't even think that the 2015 HeForShe deadline will be met. In an interview this year, she said that current projections indicate that achieving gender equality will take 95 years – unless things change fast. Or, you know, until another bunch of guys hold another barbershop conference.
Watch Emma Watson's HeForShe speech below:
