Stories

^{Elizabeth Nyamayaro (centre) visited De Beers' Voorspoed Mine in South Africa.}

Can you explain more about HeForShe?

HeForShe invites people around the world to stand together to create a bold, visible force for gender equality. The idea is that gender equality is understood and supported everywhere. It’s not just a women’s issue. It’s about human rights. HeForShe has already won enormous support: more than 1.3 billion have signed up to the Count Me In movement.

Why does HeForShe choose to partner with private sector companies?

We are looking at the private sector to come in as a partner to help us accelerate progress, as well as leveraging technological innovation that the UN itself doesn’t have. But we also see a symbiotic relationship between the UN and the private sector in terms of making sure that companies do business responsibly, and that they don’t make the world’s problems worse than they are. From UN Women’s standpoint, the critical thing is to look at how women are represented within companies and within society. We encourage companies to look beyond their own institution and into the communities where they operate. The focus at UN Women is to figure out a way to rally the private sector to achieve a gender equal world by 2030.

How do you select which companies you want to work with, and why did you choose De Beers?

We are looking for role models, for companies that demonstrate willingness and a proven record in terms of being transformative when it comes to gender equality. A lot of companies and CEOs would like to be on the right side of history and are willing to step into the limelight and say ‘I want to be part of that change’. So we look for companies who have this passion and interest and, of course, the ability to deliver, and so De Beers was a no-brainer for us. They’ve been doing a lot of work on gender and we knew that we had a really good stepping point with them.

We also wanted to look at the HeForShe angle, which considers how men and boys can be part of the solution, how they can be equal partners in creating societies of equality. So the engagement of men is critical and we know that it will be critical as well for De Beers, as they are advancing gender equality. We saw that De Beers would be a fantastic fit for us, and would become a catalyst to show other companies in their sector that change is possible.

What does being a HeForShe Thematic Champion mean?

The Thematic Champion initiative, which was inaugurated in 2016 by Justin Trudeau, Prime Minister of Canada, is not for the fainthearted man. It’s for men who really want to change the world.

We are looking for people who dare to invent the future. And that goes for De Beers Group CEO Bruce Cleaver, who became a Thematic Champion in 2017. The big legacy for HeForShe and for our champions is that they create solutions and put them out into the world so we can create a tipping point in this 21st century. We are seizing a moment in history.

The role for all our champions, including Bruce Cleaver, is that they have to be part of creating practical solutions for gender equality so that we can scale them beyond their own industry. By the end of 2020, we are hoping to come up with a set of concrete solutions, so we’ll be documenting what De Beers and other partners implement, what interventions are being tested, and which interventions failed to deliver and why, because we want to make sure other people don’t waste money, time and resources, making the same mistakes over and over again.

What are your hopes for the partnership with De Beers?

We are in the early days. The partnership with De Beers has started well. Success will ultimately be measured in terms of whether, years from now, the women who work for the company or live in the communities where it operates have access to opportunities and can feel a difference for the better in their lives.

The biggest thing is that, with the right kind of leadership and commitment, we can demonstrate HeForShe has made a difference by engaging men, and an even bigger difference by engaging men with power. While women can aim to smash through the glass ceiling, it would be better to take it away and save them from cutting their hands.