HeForShe at the Jaipur Literature Festival

Author: Rineeta Naik

Over 2,500 new supporters join UN Women’s gender equality campaign

Jaipur, India - More than 2,500 men and boys pledged their support to UN Women’s HeForShe campaign at the celebrated Jaipur Literature Festival in January 2015, The energetic signature drive helped to strengthen the global movement for gender equality that has already galvanised over 200,000 supporters worldwide.

Visitors thronged the UN Women festival booth to sign up and pose for photos with HeForShe placards and badges. UN Women staff and volunteers also encouraged visitors to bring their friends, colleagues and relatives to the booth, and many did, with great enthusiasm.

“We’ve had a tremendous response to the campaign here at the Jaipur Literature Fest.." said UN Women Representative Rebecca Reichmann Tavares. “We’ve had a large number of very enthusiastic men and boys supporting the campaign and speaking out strongly in favour of gender equality. We hope to build on this momentum and get many more to make the pledge.”

The UN Women Multi-Country Office (MCO) also supported the ‘Women Uninterrupted Series’ organized during the ZEE Jaipur Literature Festival in partnership with Teamwork Arts. It featured five renowned women writers from across India and the world who gave their perspectives on gender, justice and equality. The high-powered authors discussed the dynamics between gender, poverty and power, challenging boundaries such as caste and gender, what it means to be a woman writer in a patriarchal society, and indigenous and emerging forms of feminism.

UN Women’s presence at the Festival was crucial for its advocacy efforts, particularly in engaging youth. A number of new initiatives were developed by student groups and universities, for example, the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur, organized a HeForShe signature campaign on 26 January, while the Indira Gandhi Delhi Technical University for Women adopted HeForShe as a theme for their annual cultural festival. The two events added another 1,000 signatures to the global campaign.