Exploring the Impact of #HeForShe Campaign on Gender Equality

The #HeForShe campaign is a solidarity initiative started by UN Women to promote gender equality by involving men in addressing issues faced by women. Launched with Emma Watson's speech at the UN, it effectively used social media to engage a global audience, resulting in widespread commitments and discussions about gender equality. The movement has been praised for its inclusivity yet criticized for potentially reinforcing gender stereotypes. This study examines the campaign's strategies, impact, and reception while considering its role in bridging the gender gap.

Running head: GENDER AND SOCIAL MEDIA
Gender and social media
(#HeForShe campaign)
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author Note

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Gender and social media, the case of #HeForShe campaign:
The hashtag is regarded more than any collection of characters. It is the technique used for
reaching the new people, connecting with the open-minded individuals and facilitates the streams of
conversions.
The following study introduces the #HeForShe campaign along with a graphic timeline. It
includes the origination of mapping the hash-tag till the current date.
The campaign #HeForShe was a solidarity campaign meant for the development of women
as initiated by the UN Women. The primary objective was to gain the equality through encouraging
the males to change and take measures against various inequalities met by females negatively. Its
concept was lying on the basis that the gender equality is a problem affecting every people
irrespective of society, economy and politics. The movement needed more men to get actively
involved.
The campaign got launched in September in 2014. This started with the great speech given
by Emma Watson at UN. She highlighted the critical responsibilities of males in the search for
gender equality. The hashtag then leveraged the statement. It capitalized on the planned momentum
and endorsement of the celebrities spontaneously for creating the world-wide conversation regarding
gender equality. The outcome was that the movement of males was self-identification as HeForShes
throughout the globe. This launch got a favorable response over twitter. It was referred to as a
catalytic movement of the year (Ames & Burcon, 2016). Within one week about more than ten
million males pledged their commitments regarding gender equality in all most all the nations in the
world. This campaign within less than a couple of weeks witnessed about one million tweets from

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more than approximately seven million different users. This reached nearly one billion unique users
in Twitter.
Figure 1: “People taking the #HeForShe pledge”
(Source: "HeForShe Pledge - Australian National Committee for UN Women", 2017)
The hashtag along with accompanying the social media campaign was instrumental to the
continuous achievement of that initiative. At first, the campaign capitalized the rising momentum
and drove the social media users to make the commitments. This execution of sophisticated nature
was very essential. For instance, the women at UN promoted and streamlined the content from the
event around all the accounts on Hootsuite globally (Knight, 2015). It used its channels over time for
sharing the compelling content for staying engaged with the fans and followers and many new ones.

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Figure 2: “Illustrating the glass ceilings”
(Source: "HeForShe — University of Leicester", 2017)
The relation between the offline and online life has also been integral to the substantially.
The hash-tag coordinated with the women of the nation who were affiliated to the offices across the
world. This was to develop the real-world outcomes back to the society. Thus it repeatedly kept the
followers educated and engaged on its progress. The hashtag turned out to be the rallying cry for all
the people (Chang, 2015). This included the celebrity influencers to the men and women across the
world. This captured the audience with diverse qualities. This felt like they have ultimately been
heard and got united under the similar conversion.
The hashtag was used by all the people to provide the equal voice for the discussion. The
conversation about the gender equality remained no-longer a one-sided one. This has been to break

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down the wall assuring that half of the humanity has been working for the other half for everybody’s
benefit. Thus HeForShe developed an unprecedented movement. This was both in on and off-line.
Figure 3: “Graph of women varying in occupation working for free on the basis of wage gap in
the area”
(Source: "Gender pay gap statistics - Statistics Explained", 2017)
The nation trialed the initiative known as the 10*10*10 Impact Champions. They were
selected to participate in about ten universities around the world. This prioritized the legislative
corporations and bodies in the basis of the significance of the inequality in those sectors. This was
confirmed by the outcomes from the global gender-gap report of the World Economic Forum in
2014. This report highlighted the huge gap taking place between the two genders as per as political

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empowerment. This indicated that there had been a small development in the equality of workplace
since 2006.
Figure 4: “ The panel of ACS celebrating the gender and ethnic diversity”
(Source: "HeForShe — University of Leicester", 2017)
The solidarity movement for the equality achieved new exposure in March 2015. This took
place while the JPMorgan Chase &Co, a leading financial service organization encouraged the
support for the movements. This was done on the screens of the Chase ATMs in all over Los
Angeles and New York City (Dwight, 2016).

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Figure 5: “Reaction of people on Twitter”
(Source: Ruiz, 2017)
However, though the campaign met with few approvals and supports, this faced a vast
criticism. According to some, the campaign left behind people suffering the most from the inequality
like the non-binary people. Other claimed that the event has been upholding the gender stereotypes
denoted by the name of the hashtag. It pointed to the stronger men allies required to step up for
defending the more victimized and sensitive females. These critics also admitted that the event
sidelined themed. Some also noted that the game was run by the privileged women of the nation.
These women did not need to endure the various struggles of the equality inhabiting the most of
them who suffered from that.

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References:
Ames, M., & Burdon, S. (2016). Reading between the lines: The lessons adolescent girls learn
through popular young adult literature. In How Pop Culture Shapes the Stages of a Woman’s
Life (pp. 32-57). Palgrave Macmillan UK.
Chang, C. (2015). Rhetorical Analysis Essay on Emma Watson’s Speech “Gender Equality is Your.
Dwight, E. (2016). Celebrity Humanitarianism: Bridging the Gap. Harvard International
Review, 37(3), 18.
Gender pays gap statistics - Statistics Explained. (2017). Ec.europa.eu. Retrieved 30 October 2017,
from http://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/index.php/Gender_pay_gap_statistics
HeForShe — University of Leicester. (2017). Le.ac.uk. Retrieved 30 October 2017, from
https://le.ac.uk/about/equality-diversity/heforshe
HeForShe Pledge - Australian National Committee for UN Women.
(2017). Support.unwomen.org.au. Retrieved 30 October 2017, from
https://support.unwomen.org.au/heforshe-pledge
Knight, R. (2015). Tweet all about it: public views on the UN’s HeForShe campaign.
Ruiz, R. (2017). Emma Watson shares custom emboli on International Women's Day. Mash able.
Retrieved 30 October 2017, from http://mashable.com/2016/03/08/emma-watson-he-for-she-
emoji/#o7MYygwSqPqx

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