Stern students attend UN Women’s HeforShe Summit, form Gender Equality Council on campus

By Kimberly Zhou, Isabel Becerra and Adhya Singh, NYU Stern Council on Gender Equality

To be respectfully disruptive means to challenge the status quo.

This was the message that NYU Stern Community members remembered most when we attended the HeForShe Summit, UN Women’s flagship event during UN General Assembly week. An initiative of UN Women, HeForShe was launched nine years ago as an invitation for men to stand in solidarity with women in pursuit of gender equality. It was a high-level gathering of government leaders, business executives, university students, and community members. The most ambitious of these leaders have joined the HeForShe Alliance as champions, having committed to advancing progress on gender equality over a five-year period.

NYU Stern students at UN Women's HeforShe summit, an event focused on promoting greater gender equality and male allyship.
 

A diverse range of panelists presented on challenging stereotypes in their pursuits of gender equality - all under the theme of being “respectfully disruptive”. UN Women’s Executive, Ms. Sima Bahous, opened the summit with staggering statistics: UN Women found that 58% of men ages 16-19 thought men were better political leaders than women; 1 in 4 men found it acceptable to hit a spouse. Another panelist, university student Diego Alfonso Juarez conducted a 22,000-person survey on gender-based violence to raise awareness about gender equality at his university. The CEO of HSBC, Noel Quinn, committed to having 35% of HSBC’s workforce be women. These leaders realized they could help remedy an existing issue and took a stand to enact change for a more equitable future.  

A second panel examined how generative AI exacerbates the current gender and racial bias found in society. Panelist Leonardo Nicoletti from Bloomberg News, for example, revealed his research on AI imaging which, when asked to produce images of CEOs, produced mainly images of older, white men. For context, 10.4% of Fortune 500 CEOs are women. Dr. Joy Buolamwini, computer scientist and digital activist at the MIT Media Lab, remarked that current legacy systems in place do not prioritize fairness and inclusivity: “As we create new systems, we must check on old ones.”

One of the most powerful discussions considered disrupting the narrative on men and boys. The main question: where are men left in the conversation on gender? Though the concept of womanhood has changed drastically over the last few decades, the concept of manhood, and masculine values, have relatively remained the same. Men increasingly seem to be left out and left behind in the gender equality movement. This has led to the rise of dissatisfaction with the feminist movement and thus, the rise of figures such as Andrew Tate– who are incredibly influential with young boys.

Stern's Gender Equality Council volunteered at the event, and is working together with Social Impact Programming to help advance gender equity on Stern's campus and beyond. From left to right: Adhya Singh (Stern), Kimberly Zhou (Stern), Isabel Becerra (Stern), and Andy Wang (CAS).
 

One of Stern’s five pillars is Social Impact. As future business leaders, we believe that students should be conscientious of their impact on society. This is characterized by our Social Impact Core– a series of classes designed to explore the intersection of business and society. Students supplement these classes with extracurricular programs, for example becoming Social Impact Fellows, pursuing a social venture or internship supported by a social impact stipend, or participating in clubs and student groups such as the Undergraduate Stern Women in Business, Net Impact, Economic Development Group, or Stern’s newly founded Gender Equality Council.

Inspired by last year's summit, one student, Pooja Anand, co-founded the Stern Council on Gender Equality in hopes of promoting the benefits of gender equality to the student body. For the past year, the Council for Gender Equality and the Business and Society Program (BSP) at NYU Stern have been developing a partnership with UN Women and HeForShe. 

Stern students gather after the event, which was themed #RespectfullyDisruptive
 

We are working in tandem to recognize the importance of gender equality for all at NYU Stern, and as we embark on our future careers. In April, the Council for Gender Equality and BSP will host a conference to demonstrate our commitment to these issues and start to facilitate the change that's become so necessary in our professional lives, our families, and our communities. 

We have to remember that gender equality and feminism is for everyone. We tend to look at gender equality as a zero-sum game, but greater gender equality will help everyone succeed. 

Interested in getting involved at Stern? Join our mailing list to learn about the spring conference!