Watch: Feminist Emma Watson Delivers Amazing Speech On Gender Equality

“Harry Potter” actress, feminist, and UN Women Goodwill Ambassador Emma Watson delivered an incredible speech on gender equality that is going viral.

“Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.”

Emma Watson may be best-known as Hermione Granger in the famous “Harry Potter” series, but the 24-year old Paris-born actress, who was appointed UN Women Goodwill Ambassador this year just delivered a speech at the United Nations that may rival all her previous work.

On Saturday, Watson received a standing applause from host Wolf Blitzer and the entire room as she launched the UN’s HeForShe campaign to end gender inequality.

Watson said “the more I have spoken about feminism the more I have realized that fighting for women’s rights has too often become synonymous with man-hating. If there is one thing I know for certain, it is that this has to stop.”

Announcing that she is “among the ranks of women whose expressions are seen as too strong, too aggressive, isolating, anti-men and, unattractive,” Watson told the room of hundreds that when she decided she was a feminist it “seemed uncomplicated” to her. “But my recent research has shown me that feminism has become an unpopular word.”

Men—I would like to take this opportunity to extend your formal invitation. Gender equality is your issue too.

I’ve seen young men suffering from mental illness unable to ask for help for fear it would make them look less “macho”—in fact in the UK suicide is the biggest killer of men between 20-49; eclipsing road accidents, cancer and coronary heart disease. I’ve seen men made fragile and insecure by a distorted sense of what constitutes male success. Men don’t have the benefits of equality either.

We don’t often talk about men being imprisoned by gender stereotypes but I can see that that they are and that when they are free, things will change for women as a natural consequence.

If men don’t have to be aggressive in order to be accepted women won’t feel compelled to be submissive. If men don’t have to control, women won’t have to be controlled.

Both men and women should feel free to be sensitive. Both men and women should feel free to be strong… It is time that we all perceive gender on a spectrum not as two opposing sets of ideals.

If we stop defining each other by what we are not and start defining ourselves by what we are—we can all be freer and this is what HeForShe is about. It’s about freedom. 

Watch:

 

Text of Watson’s full speech and the full conference video are posted at the UN.

Image by UN Women via Flickr