HeForShe, a campaign introduced by UN Women on September 20th, acquired the interest of people worldwide. The United Nations Entity for Gender Equality and the Empowerment of Women, better known as UN Women, is the force fueling this movement. It focuses on inviting men to combat violations of human rights against women, and believes that the participation of men in feminism is crucial in order for existing gender inequity problems to be solved. It calls itself a “solidarity movement,” and hopes to include all people in the battle against gender inequality, as it is not solely a women’s issue in their eyes.

HeForShe’s biggest goal is to enlist one billion men as allies to women within one year. These allies are to consciously act against sex-based discrimination and violence. Thus far, approximately 180,000 men have pledged since its launch, with the US in the lead with just over 52,000 men. In its Action Kit, featured on its website, it provides the details on what it hopes to accomplish along with this. The purpose of it is to give those who are interested a means of setting up their own branch of HeForShe. It also provides instructions and recommendations on how to do so.

This Action Kit, which describes how to participate in the campaign, puts a large emphasis on social media broadcasting and events to celebrate and support the initiative. Additionally, it wants to utilize the power of celebrities, as it hopes countries will appoint role models to represent the movement. The initiative exemplified this at its UN debut by having Emma Watson lead its campaign launch. It encourages countries and localities to make measurable monthly goals, have lots of media coverage of its events, and to have an ongoing dialogue about the current state of gender inequity through panels and conferences.

While the campaign is very ambitious and plans to accomplish much, it does not acknowledge the vast amount of women who do not fight for their own rights; no small part of them being anti-feminists. How can we exclusively ask men to help women when there is no consensus among women regarding the rights of women? Furthermore, the campaign does nothing to recognize those who do not fall directly into the gender binary. There are many brands of feminism that include people who do not identify specifically as a he or a she, and some that even argue that gender in itself disempowers women. These needs are ignored by HeForShe.

Already, Iceland has declared a UN conference pertaining to the issue of gender inequity, one that invites only men. While this is revolutionary, exclusivity is not something that should be encouraged when dealing with inequity. In what way does this conference gain value by eliminating women from the table, especially ones that will discuss the issues that they themselves face? All people should be involved when it comes to eliminating inequality and violations of human rights, even though we have differentiations, we are all human.