UN under fire for picking Wonder Woman to lead campaign
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The United Nations on Monday defended the choice of comic
book character Wonder Woman to lead a campaign for the empowerment of
girls following criticism that the choice was demeaning to women.
UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon is due to attend a ceremony
on Friday to officially designate Wonder Woman as the UN honorary
ambassador for the empowerment of women and girls. Secretary General of the United Nations, Ban Ki-Moon
The announcement came a few days after Antonio Guterres, the
former prime minister of Portugal, was chosen to be the next secretary
general, disappointing women’s groups who had campaigned for the first
woman to be appointed the world’s diplomat-in-chief.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Shazia Rafi, one of the leaders of
the She4SG campaign and a former secretary general of Parliamentarians
for Global Action.
“The campaign for women’s empowerment is represented by a
cartoon when there are so many real-life women who could have been
chosen,” she said.
Rafi, who has written to Ban urging him to skip the
ceremony, is pushing for a boycott of the event on Friday, demanding
that Wonder Woman be dropped from the campaign.
“It should be scrapped,” she told AFP.
UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric hit back at the criticism,
saying the choice of Wonder Woman was simply an attempt to reach younger
audiences.
“In order to reach young people, in order to reach audiences outside this building, we need to be creative,” he told reporters.
But Rafi rejected that explanation, saying “younger women
are no longer looking at themselves and think they need to be dressed in
cleavage and bustiers to be taken seriously.”
The UN spokesman urged critics to wait for the formal
announcement on Friday before drawing any conclusions about the goals of
the year-long campaign.
The initiative, dubbed “All the Wonders We Can Do,” will
focus on gender equality and women’s empowerment, one of the UN’s global
goals for the next 15 years.
DC Entertainment President Diane Nelson is set to attend the
event along with “surprise guests” — possibly actress Lynda Carter, who
portrayed Wonder Woman in the hit TV series in the 1970s.
“Yes it’s a comic book, it’s science fiction,” Dujarric said after fielding several questions about the choice of Wonder Woman.
“I wish I could use my lasso of truth.”
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