Outcome 3: Positive social norms, including through engaging men and boys

The growth of artificial intelligence has shown the technology’s potential to create new ways of working, but also to exacerbate existing inequalities and stereotypes. At UN Women’s recent HeForShe Summit, leaders from the public and private sectors discussed the potential risks of AI, and the need to develop the technology safely.

At the summit, leaders discussed factors that are shaping dominant narratives around masculinity today, and offered concrete positive alternatives for men to foster allyship and leadership in the pursuit for gender equality under the call to be respectfully disruptive. Read more>

Mengistie Tegenie’s four sisters were married before the age of 18. Bright and academically gifted, their schooling—like that of many young women in Ethiopia—stopped after their arranged marriages.

During his first year at university, Tegenie says he felt guilty that he was able to continue his studies while his sisters were not. For many young women, he adds, child marriage doesn’t just block them from career opportunities; it comes with the added risk of gender-based violence (GBV). Read more>

In the southwestern Chinese city of Kunming, the Yunnan Mingxin Social Work Service Center has worked for nearly 10 years aiding survivors of gender-based violence. The organization’s services range from an abuse hotline to a shelter, “Nesting House”, that operates in an undisclosed location. Since April 2023, the organization has been a member of the network of local civil society organizations in China to receive support from UN Women.

Gender-based violence has had a place on China’s national policy agenda in recent years; since the country’s first national law on domestic violence went into effect in 2016, the national hotline to report such abuse has received 250,000 calls. From March 2016 to December 2022, authorities issued about 15,000 protective orders to survivors. Read more>

Sakna Mahmoud, 32, spent her early childhood in the village of Hassania, close to the city of Mosul, Iraq. When she was just 13, her family arranged her marriage to a man nine years her senior, putting an end to her education.

For many women and girls in Iraq, decades of war have led to generational poverty, disrupted education and child marriage. Along with its massive death toll, the war has also left countless women widowed—including Mahmoud. Read more>

On 10 May 2023, UN Women, with support from the Ford Foundation, organised a Roundtable with distinguished cultural and faith leaders in Nigeria alongside women’s rights organisations (WROs) to escalate collective action to curb violence against women and girls in Nigeria. The roundtable also marked the launch of a Ford Foundation-funded three-year project titled Traditional and Cultural Leaders for Ending GBV by Advancing Advocacy, Policy and Social Norms Change in Nigeria and West Africa (LEAP). Read more>

Cannes, France – The Unstereotype Alliance, an industry-led coalition convened by UN Women to eradicate harmful stereotypes in advertising, today reveals society is awash with harmful stereotyping, with marginalized communities targeted in particular in their day-to-day lives.

Globally, three in four (73%) people state they regularly see or hear stereotyping yet only one in three (30%) will frequently say something to object to it. Half (50%) believe people do not speak up or disagree when they see someone using a negative stereotype, because they do not want to escalate the situation. Additionally, two in five (41%) believe people do not speak up or disagree with the perpetrator because they do not know what to say, highlighting an education gap on how to take a constructive stand against stereotypes. Read more>

Cameroon has been hit by repeated crises, including climate disasters, attacks on civilians by insurgent groups, and the economic impact of COVID-19 and rising inflation due to the war in Ukraine. In 2022, 3.9 million people required humanitarian assistance. Additionally, 979,000 people were in need of gender-based violence (GBV) services—94 percent of whom were women and girls.

According to Loveline Musah, CEO of United Youths Organization (UYO), harmful social norms in Cameroon have “resulted in men asserting dominance over women. If a man violates a woman physically or sexually, it’s because communities believe that men are more powerful than women. And these beliefs perpetuate GBV.” Read more>