by Dr Róisín Read.

24 October marks United Nations Day and, as my colleague notes, there is much to admire in the UN, alongside some of its more problematic elements. Unfortunately, this blog is about one of those problems, specifically, the UN’s woman problem.

This month António Guterres was selected as the new Secretary General of the UN in a race which saw seven female candidates rejected along the way. It was perhaps unfortunate that the announcement of Wonder Woman as a new honorary ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls came so soon after the failed push to elect a woman to the UN’s most senior role. In particular, the protest came from within the UN itself, with staffers setting up an online petition protesting the appointment and staging a silent live protest at the launch event on Friday. The petition cites the ‘overtly sexualized image’ and notes that the character’s image ‘is not culturally encompassing or sensitive’. The criticisms of the honorary appointment bear a strong resemblance to those levelled at Jane Lunnon, the headteacher of Wimbledon High School, who recently caused controversy by claiming young women should look to Shakespeare’s heroines for role models rather than stars such as Taylor Swift and Kim Kardashian West. Staff at the UN protested with signs reading ‘I am a real woman, I deserve a real ambassador’.

For me the problem is not so much the appointment of Wonder Woman, other honorary ambassadors have included Tinkerbell (honorary ambassador of green in 2009) and Winnie the Pooh (International Day of Friendship). The UN is trying to be creative and engage wider audiences, I understand that. Also, a real woman would have similarly faced criticism for cultural specificity, and pretty much all women, in the public eye or not, face criticism for the way they dress. No, for me, the problem is hypocrisy.

The Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Wonder Woman is to champion is number five: ‘to achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls’. Despite championing women in leadership globally, according to the New York Times, one analysis of UN appointments last year ‘found that nine of 10 senior leadership jobs last year went to men’, despite a pledge of gender parity in senior appointments (a pledge Guterres has also renewed). If the UN wants to champion gender equality and empowerment with appointments of fictional or, indeed, real women, it also needs to work much harder to right its own ship. The problem here isn’t with Wonder Woman, it’s with the UN.

But not just the UN. Women in workplaces around the world face subtle and pervasive forms of discrimination, 77 per cent according to a recent report. The British Council published its first assessment of the UK’s progress on the SDGs, and British women hold less than 30 per cent of positions of power and influence.

If the UN wants to champion women, it needs to take concrete action to do so within its own organisation and, if it wants to avoid the embarrassing situation the UK Women and Equalities Commission and the Canadian Federal Standing Committee on Finance found themselves in, it should definitely ensure that real women are invited to the conversation about how to do this.

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