Cork campaigners Molly Sterling and Ronan Conway joined President Higgins at Áras an Uachtaráin last Thursday at an event calling for a culture change in more actively engaging men in gender equality issues nationally and globally.
Speaking in the context of the UN’s ‘HeforShe’ campaign, President Higgins stressed how important he felt it was to use his office to convey a simple but vital message: that men must stand in solidarity with women if women’s rights are to be fully achieved. As a global ambassador for the HeforShe campaign, he called on people around the world to stand together as equal partners to craft a shared vision of a gender equal world, and to specifically undertake the challenge of engaging men and boys to promote gender equality, and to combat gender based violence.
Well-known Cork-based musician and founder of The Reclaim Project, Molly Sterling was one of the invited guests. She said it was great to hear the president show leadership in an area she is passionate about:
“The president reminded us of the urgent response needed to gender based violence in Irish society. He called on society to not just not be passive in our agreement that ‘yes, we are all interconnected’ but to create action and urgent response to the issue of gender based violence in all forms, affecting the lives and safety of all genders. He called on us to accept the moral responsibility of being connected to each other. ”
