ESADE Business & Law School has just joined the HeForShe platform, an initiative of UN Women to promote gender equality. The move was announced by Enrique Verdeguer, director of ESADE Madrid, following a talk by Meral Guzel, Regional Coordinator for Europe and Central Asia of Empower Women at UN Women, in which she offered an overview of the different projects that the UN has carried out thus far in keeping with the 2030 Agenda. Specifically, HeForShe focuses on promoting equality by first engaging men as advocates and change agents in the struggle to achieve gender equality and women’s rights.

‘At ESADE, we believe that one of our main missions should be helping to train people to contribute to making a more diverse and plural world’, said Verdeguer. ‘Achieving that diversity is not only a moral imperative and question of fairness; it will also help to consolidate much richer organisations that are far more able of taking advantage of existing talent.’ ‘It makes no sense that even today the skills and value of so many people are not being harnessed’, he continued, noting that, for him, ‘HeForShe is an integrating, unifying initiative, in which ESADE hopes to participate as one of the vital change agents by means of training, research and social debate.’ 

For Guzel, the commitment is clear: ‘When women lead, there is less conflict and more innovation’. She moreover insisted on the need for women’s economic empowerment, as ‘the return is guaranteed, at both the household and regional level’. ‘A world in which every woman can raise her voice and make her own decisions will generate a wealth of opportunity’, she stressed.

HeForShe

The HeForShe initiative was launched in 2014 by the UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon and is based on four founding pillars: the empowerment of women, recognition of their role in world peace and security, support for their participation and leadership in public and private spheres, and the eradication of gender-based violence. Achieving these goals not only requires the commitment of women, but also that of men, whom HeForShe encourages to participate, whether at the individual, institutional or national level. 

With yesterday’s announcement, ESADE became the first business school in Spain to join HeForShe. This affiliation, promoted by Marta Lamas, a student of the Promociona Project – Women Executive Programme, will serve as a guiding thread for many initiatives by the ESADE community —students, alumni, faculty, and administrative and service staff — in the area of gender equality. These initiatives may range from one-off or regular activities to academic programmes, the founding of debate clubs, or the preparation of awareness-raising materials.

ESADE thus follows in the footsteps of, amongst others, Oxford University and Georgetown University in the academic arena; Schneider Electric, McKinsey and Unilever, in the business world; and of various prime ministers, such as Shinzo Abe (Japan) and Stefan Löfven (Sweden).

Amongst the many women who have expressed their support for the platform are the actress Emma Watson, the UN Women Goodwill Ambassador, and Phumzile Mlambo Nagusia, executive director of UN Women.