A first for the #MeToo movement will be a major international conference taking place in Reykjavik on Tuesday.
The event will be hosted by the Icelandic Prime Minister, Katrin Jakobsdóttir, who told the Guardian that she hoped it would contribute to “relegating sexual harassment to history”.
Among the topics on discussion will be exploring why the movement gained global traction, and what impact it has left behind in the various countries and sectors in which it unfolded.
Of note is the involvement of women with disabilities, care workers and migrant women, whose voices have not typically been in the spotlight since the movement began in October 2017 as a hashtag.
PM Jakobsdóttir told the Guardian that the conference was intended to “create a platform for an international and in-depth conversation about the impact and the future of #MeToo”.
“The movement revealed epidemic levels of sexual and gender-based harassment and abuse that women across society and the world are exposed to. We owe it to all those women, to the women who couldn’t speak up and to future generations, to create policies and push for transformative change, so that the realities unveiled by #MeToo will soon belong to the history books.”
The UN’s spokeswoman on addressing sexual harassment, Purna Sen, American political activist Angela Davis, Co-founder of the UK’s Women’s Equality party Catherine Mayer, the playwright Justine Kehinde and positive masculinity campaigner Gary Barker all form part of the 80-person panel at the conference.
