#HeforShe

The British actress Emma Watson is a UN Ambassador for women’s issues and she made her first speech at the UN a few days ago, launching a campaign on gender equality. I think she put her finger on a very important point, which is that gender equality is not a woman’s issue, it’s a man’s issue.

We men, particularly men in more senior positions, have a real responsibility and an opportunity to make a difference. Now that’s something that applies internationally of course – we in the FCO have been running a big campaign on preventing violence against women as a result of international conflict, it applies to what the UN will be discussing next year – a new set of development goals for the world starting in 2015, for instance on girls education which is still lagging way behind where it should be.

But it’s also something that applies nationally. In our own institutions in Britain and in business it’s far from being equal at senior level and it’s true in the civil service as well. I was head of the Foreign Office before this job and I worked hard to try to bring on women into more senior, responsible roles but we still haven’t gone far enough and my successor is carrying on with that work.

All of us can help and I myself have had the experience, in a senior position, of reaching out to a more junior woman, reassuring her that she has the skills and the experience to go right to the top of the organisation and then helping in the next stages. That reaching out to give someone confidence and assurance that they are really good, I think, can be very powerful and it’s something that all of us men in senior positions can do.

So I welcome Emma’s campaign and I wanted to add my own, personal support to it. As she said in her speech “if not me then who, if not now, then when”. I hope that you too will be willing to give your support to the campaign and that you will sign up to it using this hashtag: #HeforShe