A meeting of the UN body promoting equality for women starts with five male speakers

Croatia’s U.N. Ambassador Ivan Šimonović, the third male speaker representing the U.N. Economic and Social Council, apologized for the absence of the council’s president, a woman, who had a family emergency. So, he said, “you are getting the male vice president, adding to the agenda disbalance of this opening.”

The U.N.’s preeminent body promoting equality for women and girls opened its annual meeting Monday with five male speakers in a row – a lineup that made some of the men uneasy and was somewhat baffling to the hundreds of women in the packed General Assembly chamber.

Achim Steiner, the head of the U.N. Development Program and the last of the male speakers, said when he stepped to the microphone: “I am very conscious of the fact that I am yet another man standing at this podium addressing you.”

He said he had two choices: “Don’t speak or stand up” and support gender equality.

Croatia’s U.N. Ambassador Ivan Šimonović, the third male speaker representing the U.N. Economic and Social Council, apologized for the absence of the council’s president, a woman, who had a family emergency. So, he said, “you are getting the male vice president, adding to the agenda disbalance of this opening.”

The first woman to speak was sixth in line, Chetna Gala Sinha, who represented civil society and was loudly cheered when she was called to the podium.

Ms. Sinha moved from Mumbai to a drought-prone village in Maharashtra three decades ago and helped local women start a bank. Now, she said, “our women want to go from microcredit to micro-enterprise” so “there has never been a better time to invest in women” — a theme of this year’s meeting of the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women, along with addressing poverty.

After a speech by a young woman from Malawi representing youth, the commission’s chair, Philippines U.N. Ambassador Antonio Lagdameo, invited the head of the U.N. agency promoting women’s rights and gender equality to take a seat on the podium.