Glamour Magazine announced their list of Women of the Year and for the first time ever a male joins the list.
Bono of U2 is the first ever honourary Male of the Year for the work he has done in an effort to reach gender equality. The editor-in-chief at Glamour Magazine, Cindi Leive, spoke about the choice of including a male alongside the list of females.
“We’ve talked for years about whether to honour a man at Women of the Year and we’ve always kind of put the kibosh on it. You know, men get a lot of awards and aren’t exactly hurting in the celebration and honours department, but it started to seem that that might be an outdated way of looking at things and there are so many men who really are doing wonderful things for women these days.”
The decision has caused quite the controversy on social media.
Glamour naming Bono "Woman of the Year" is just another example of a man getting a job despite there being women more qualified to do it.
— OhNoSheTwitnt (@OhNoSheTwitnt) November 2, 2016
Does Glamour Magazine know giving Bono the "Woman of the year" award for trying to undo patriarchy undercuts the entire point of the award?
— Travon Free (@Travon) November 1, 2016
Bono has been named Glamour's woman of the year. To be fair with only 3.7b women it must be tough to find a worthy one
— Stephanie Peat (@StephEPeat) November 1, 2016
Iman Bashirr from the Women in Leadership Club at Western says she sees it differently.
“I love it. I think that it’s definitely He for She and I think that we need there to be males empowering females. They are even more apart of the equation of gender equality. I feel like it really is about men too. There’s a lot of different definitions of feminism and I really don’t think it’s all women it’s gender equality.”
She’s believes it a step in the right direction because the issue must be resolved together, not as opposing forces.
Bashirr started the Women in Leadership Club at Western after noticing the inequalities in her own workplace and hopes that it will foster all types of leaders for the future.
Other women of Glamour’s list include Gwen Stefani, Simone Biles, and Zendaya.