Emma Watson at the United Nations

Sep 27, 2016

Posted by: Catherine

HP Cast, News, Watson

As reported earlier this year, Emma Watson is currently taking a year off filming and acting to focus her attention on her role as Women’s Ambassador to the United Nations. Over the last week, Emma and her HeForShe campaign for equality, and other women-focused projects, have released campaign videos and more. Emma gave a small speech at the United Nations, introducing a project that focused on ridding university campuses of sexual assault.

 

 

Newsweek wrote a more extensive report on the UN Women’s partnering with 10 university campuses across the world to start improving gender equality and lower sexual assault rates. Newsweek stated:

 

HeForShe, U.N. Women’s “solidarity movement for gender equality,” published a report on Tuesday, which looks at gender parity in 10 universities across five continents, representing around 700,000 students and 40,000 faculty members: Stony Brook University in New York; Georgetown University in Washington, D.C.; the University of Hong Kong; Nagoya University in Japan; Oxford University; the University of Leicester in the U.K.; the University of Sao Paulo; the University of the Witwatersrand in South Africa; the University of Waterloo in Canada; and Sciences Po in France.

 

“One in three women worldwide is known to experience some form of physical or sexual violence in her lifetime. Many more victims remain silent due to shame, guilt, or fear,” HeForShe said in a statement on Tuesday. “Men and boys are also the victims of physical and sexual violence; while gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer students may be targeted on the basis of their sexual or gender identity.”

 

 

The 10 universities have agreed to provide campus-wide training and briefings for all faculty, administration and students on sexual violence, and “use the HeForShe platform as an arena for learning, sharing and implementation of international best practices to protect against gender-based violence on campus,” according to HeForShe.

 

Problems identified across all 10 universities include a lack of women in STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) subjects and a lack of men studying social sciences. Data from the report show that a roughly equal number of men and women are undergraduate students across all universities except Nagoya, where fewer than 30 percent of undergraduate and graduate students are women. Among senior leadership at Nagoya, 11.4 percent are women.

 

Though we miss seeing Emma Watson on screen, we can see her time and efforts is being put to good use. Emma Watson finished filming Beauty and the Beast some time ago; the film will be released in March 2017.





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