Daniel Seymour on UN Women and Strategic Partnerships

Author(s): Scott Douglas Jacobsen

Publication (Outlet/Website): The Good Men Project

Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2024/08/20

Daniel Seymour is UN Women’s Strategic Partnerships Director. He previously worked at Save the Children UK as its first Human Rights Officer and in government as an advisor on child rights to the UK Foreign Secretary.  He joined the UN with UNICEF, working on child protection, gender, and human rights. He was seconded to UN Women in 2010 to support its establishment.

Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Today, we are here with Daniel Seymour, the Director of Strategic Partnerships at UN Women. I have been working on and off around women’s rights initiatives or human rights initiatives generally, focusing on women in this context. Now that I have more time, I’m seeking more exploratory work and profiling in that domain. So, how did you get involved with UN Women? How did you get involved in the area of strategic partnerships?

Daniel Seymour: I joined UN Women from UNICEF. My career path was serendipitous, as many career paths are. I found myself as the Head of Gender and Human Rights at UNICEF. While I was in that role, then-Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon proposed, and member states accepted, the establishment of UN Women, the youngest UN entity. I was involved in various internal UN discussions representing UNICEF in the early days. I was then asked to help set up UN Women, which I did on a secondment from UNICEF. Our first Executive Director, Michelle Bachelet, asked me to be her Deputy Chief of Staff.

That was about 15 years ago, and I’ve had various roles since then. I applied for the partnerships role for a reason. It’s an interesting area of work involving real partnerships. More specifically, one of the reasons I felt more at home at UN Women than at other UN entities is that UN Women, because of its mission and approach, is inherently political. It’s about advocacy, influence, enabling, convening, and supporting more than it is about doing things itself.

In all my roles, I’ve been on the human rights side, believing that our development and global multilateral challenges are less about knowing what to do and more about finding ways to incentivize and encourage those in power to act differently. The challenges we face are about applying power more than capacity and knowledge. This made UN Women a natural home for me, and partnerships, which involve engaging with others to work together to drive change, are also a natural fit. I’m happy to give you some examples of what we do in this job. It’s a tough job, but I’ve learned a lot, and it’s been satisfying for me most of the time.

Jacobsen: Regarding the development of UN Women over time, as you noted and as I know, UN Women is the youngest organization emerging from probably the largest bureaucratic organization in the world, the United Nations. So, how does an organization like that develop, expand, build partnerships, and increase its impact on its goals and the broader aims of the United Nations?

Seymour: We were given a mandate by the General Assembly that’s not necessarily unique but is quite particular. They asked us to work in the intergovernmental space with member states to help them collectively find the highest common denominator on gender issues and develop ways to promote accountability and country-level progress. That’s been a big part of what we’ve done over the years, such as working during the General Assembly to ensure that gender issues are properly integrated into its work, the high-level week, and the resolutions of the Assembly. We’ve also focused on integrating gender and issues of women, peace, and security, or women in crisis, into the work of the Security Council. We make sure that the Commission on the Status of Women, the big annual global gender equality event, works well and produces good outcomes. Recently, we focused on gender and technology, discussing technology-facilitated violence and related issues. In the intergovernmental space, we’ve been trying to ensure that gender issues get the attention they deserve for the best results at the country level.

The second thing they asked us to do was coordinate within the UN system. We have promoted a system-wide approach, making people report on how well they’re integrating gender into their tracking expenses, expenditures on gender equality and so on. We also participate with other parts of the system and coordinate collective action, such as the big Spotlight Initiative on gender-based violence. Third, we do catalytic programming—small but smart programs that have a bigimpact and demonstrate what works so that other entities, especially governments, can scale them up. Domestic finance is where the big money is. So, we’re still a work in progress, I would say.

Fifteen years is a lot younger than other parts of the UN, and we’re learning how to have more and more impact. For example, we have much innovative thinking about engaging the private sector, which my team is acutely aware of. We’re also doing more around women in crisis and conflict. Since we were established, depending on how you count it, we’re the third fastest-growing part of the UN by a conservative measure. You grow only because people have confidence in you. People invest in you because they think you’re a good investment.

The track record is good, and the indicators of success are relatively strong. I’m blowing our trumpet, but it reflects that the mandate we were given and the way the General Assembly set us up made sense.

Jacobsen: What are some of the easiest ways to build those partnerships when you’re looking to combat inequalities in government systems, income insecurity, unremunerated work, violence against women, and things like this? To me and you, it is a pretty straightforward argument to make when you’re in the right spaces. Yet, to build those partnerships, you need diplomacy and tact. So, how do you do it?

Seymour: Yes, it’s variable. My facile answer is that all partnership comes from understanding the win-win. It’s not so different from sales. It would help if you found the convergence of interests with potential partners, framing things in ways that make sense to them.

One of the challenges is that we work in an organization full of people who are super focused on gender. We know all about gender, but we don’t necessarily know about gender and whatever it is that our partners care about. For example, if we’re talking to advertising companies, they know much more about advertising than we do. We have to figure out that convergence. Similarly, our colleagues who work on climate have hundreds of climate experts. We know about gender but must also figure out how to connect with them. There’s a job to understand the perspectives, priorities, interests, and incentives of the partners you’re trying to work with.

You also need to be able to make a case that explains the why. There is a belief, somewhat reductive, that it’s a self-interest argument. To convince a government to close the gender pay gap or have more rigorous legislation to prevent workplace discrimination against women who’ve had children, you have to instrumentalize the cause. You might say, “If you do that, you’ll make more money,” or “Your economy will grow more.” Those are valuable arguments, but some moral people are just as attracted to the argument of principle.

I’ve come across many influential people looking for a space to contribute. I don’t spend my whole time saying, “If you do this, it’s good for you.” Many people are super committed to these issues. Another thing about partnerships is that bigchange requires big questions. One of the skills of a partnership person is figuring out what that jigsaw looks like.

Jacobsen: Who are the different actors that must come together to make something happen? For example, my colleagues working on women’s economic empowerment focus on unpaid care—looking after kids, older people, people with disabilities, etc.

The basic idea is that if you can distribute care responsibilities more evenly and subsidize care, you free up women’s labour force participation. That’s a big economic benefit. It’s good for them because, if they choose to, they don’t have to drive the labour force, which they may not want to do. It’s better for the kids and the context.

We are assembling a coalition of governments to address various legislative and domestic investment issues around the care question and big companies. We want them to offer maternity leave and, if they have a big office somewhere, to have a creche in the office or offer flexible working arrangements for care purposes. We’re looking at academic institutions for collaboration because much research needs to be done to figure out how all of that works. We’re also looking at media collaborations or partnerships with organizations that can influence attitudinal change about care work being a woman’s job and not a job for men.

So, you have this issue: women do far more unpaid care work than men. It’s not good, and we need to fix it. Then, what constellation of different actors do we need to bring on board to drive change?

The other part of the partnership puzzle is more than just figuring out the convergent interests or the right arguments. It’s figuring out the right cast of characters to make something big happen. 

Jacobsen: The World Economic Forum provides some metrics of gender equality and inequality, but they focus more on assessing gender equality and then looking at the gaps, which they call the Global Gender Gap Report. There are consistent exemplars in terms of achieving many milestones in gender equality. Iceland, in particular, has held the top spot in that report for well over a decade. What are countries like Iceland doing right to further these aims?

Seymour: Our friends in Iceland have rightly held that top spot. It’s been 14 years, and their gender gap is over 90% closed, which is way ahead of pretty much everyone else. They are high-performing. If you visit Iceland, you can sense the equality. In terms of what you do, Scott, the concept of masculinity in Iceland is a fascinating area of investigation. You can feel that you are in a more equal society, which is nice. But to your question, what are they getting right? It’s a simple thing.

Let me give you an analogy. Gender inequality doesn’t fix itself. If you wait for it to happen, you’ll be waiting a long time—at least 300 years on the current trajectory to achieve equality. It’s almost certain that we will have humans on the moon before we achieve gender equality at the pace we’re going, which is slow and frustrating.

What countries like Iceland do is acknowledge that things will only change if they do something serious to alter them. For example, Iceland’s Gender Equality Act mandates that board membership for Icelandic companies must be 40% female. Other countries have similar rules for the ratio of men and women elected to their parliaments on party lists. Some countries make special investments to support women reentering the workplace.

People talk about a level playing field. As a British person who likes football (the game you play with your feet), imagine a situation where two teams play a match on the same pitch with the same boots, rules, and referee.

Everything is equal, so people say, “Yes, it’s a level playing field. What’s the problem?” But for the past two years, one of those teams has been free to spend all its time practicing. They’ve been working out and have massive, powerful leg muscles. Their coach has drilled them to perfection. They’re professionals. The other team has had to do another job. They’ve had no special training or preparation.

When they go out to play, the second team gets completely crushed by the first team. That’s what we have to understand. We are starting from a place of inequality, and that’s what countries like Iceland understand. More than just having the same rules for both women and men when you start from a place of inequality is required.

You have to implement what often gets called temporary special measures until you have genuinely removed the inequality of advantage and disadvantage. This way, you have a level playing field in a real sense, not a trivial, superficial sense. In my experience, whenever you see a country performing well, you can see that they have deliberately done things to even things up because they recognize they’re starting from a point of inequality. That’s the key. As long as you’re not willing to say things are unequal now and we’re going to have to do something special to get us to equality, and then when we’re there, that’s fine, we can ease off, but something extraordinary has to be done now.

Those are the countries and companies that perform better. It doesn’t happen by itself; more than that, having the same rules for everybody today is needed. You must recognize that you’re coming from a place of inequality, which requires special effort to get you equal.

Jacobsen: Now, on the opposite side of that spectrum, on the same report from the World Economic Forum, the countries listed at the lower end are Sudan, Pakistan, Chad, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Guinea, Mali, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Niger, Morocco, Oman, and so on. What internally restricts the advancement of women in these particular economies and cultures? Are the factors typically more historical, or are they more rooted in a contemporary culture of wanting to stick to the way things are now? Gender equality is often seen as a Western idea. Therefore, some do not want it, or it’s seen as a globalist idea, and there’s a desire to maintain the culture. Are certain factors considered nationalistic or traditional that prevent moving towards a more gender-equal environment?

Seymour: Yes. Good question. Two things to highlight. One is whether it’s a long-standing tradition or something more contemporary. It’s often a combination of the two when you have underlying gender inequality. Then, place stresses on that society, or even if you have a moment of change, that inequality is often amplified. COVID was a good example of that. COVID took existing problems of domestic violence and turbocharged them. A number of the countries you’re talking about, or on that WEF list, are countries experiencing some form of crisis where essentially what’s happening is that the pre-existing inequality is having a match thrown on it. That’s one angle. Of course, there’s this question of social norms and attitudes. You might be interested in taking a look at it.

A report we did in partnership with a market research company is interesting. It looks at attitudes on gender equality in 20 countries. What you see is striking: many beliefs that are inimical to gender equality are stubbornly persistent, such as whether women make as good political leaders as men, whether it’s appropriate for women to work outside the home, or whether working mothers harm their children. You find significant numbers of people in various countries—especially in the ones you’re talking about—holding regressive attitudes.

What stands out when you look at this is not just the correlation with economic development; while the correlation is there, it’s not perfect. What’s scary about some of these attitudes, such as the percentage of people who think it’s acceptable in certain circumstances to hit your spouse, is that when you break down the demographics of our gender equality attitude study, you find that the group most likely going in the wrong direction is young men. I feel, and this is somewhat personal, that there is a crisis with young men that is reflected as a misogyny crisis. This is concerning because, as you said, there are plenty of worrying numbers, for example, in the WEF report. But even more concerning is that 17-year-old boys, growing into their twenties and thirties, are carrying regressive and problematic attitudes on issues like domestic violence, women in leadership, and women in the economy. That’s worrying. 

Jacobsen: People will interpret this interview through a gender lens, too—two men talking about gender equality. As I’ve written for the Good Men Project, I’ve done many interviews with religious and non-religious leaders, particularly those involved in ethical culture, humanism, free thought, atheism, etc. My own bias is towards non-religion. Yet, even within that bias, I see religion, when interpreted in a dogmatic frame with men as leaders and heads and the portrayal of God as basically a divine male person, being used as a means to restrict women and, in turn, restrict men because they can only engage in certain roles and behaviours. In any analysis done by UN Women, is religion taken into account in ways that can both help and hinder the furtherance of gender equality?

Seymour: Most people would understand exactly where you’re coming from. I’m a Jewish atheist myself, which in my culture is not necessarily a contradiction in terms. I recognize the concern you raised. It’s certainly true that, for example, the arguably biggest gender crisis we have in the world right now—our executive director has described it as gender apartheid—is the situation in Afghanistan. There, a significant driver of the views or at least an argument used to justify this gender apartheid is a religious argument. One of the characteristics of religious belief is its diversity.

I have come across far more people of faith who argue strongly for human rights and gender equality and who contest the idea that their God is male. They argue that their God is beyond gender and vehemently oppose ideas of male domination in their faith, advocating for women priests and women rabbis. Yes, religion can be both a help and a hindrance in the pursuit of gender equality.

Of course, just as people make all sorts of calls to tradition or use very wobbly economic arguments to try and justify discriminatory beliefs, including on gender, we have worked with many people of faith and faith-based organizations who are very much on the same side of the gender equality argument as we are. We have country offices in many countries worldwide where religion plays a significant part in women’s and men’s daily lives, and I appreciate that. It’s important to point out that inequality, whether it’s based on religion or anything else, is bad for men too.

I’m a strong believer in that, and it’s an important argument to make. I have colleagues worldwide who are navigating complicated cultural situations, including religion. So, yes, of course, nobody denies it’s often difficult. But the good news is that there are always allies. That’s our job as facilitators, enablers, advocates, and so on—to work with those allies and alongside them to make progress. That’s what we do.

Jacobsen: Just looking at time, we have four minutes left on this call. How can people partner with UN Women? How can they get involved directly if they want volunteer opportunities or employment?

Seymour: It depends on where you are. We love people who come and work with us. Every job at UN Women is advertised on the website publicly and is competitive. We’re lucky to have many people wanting to work with us. We also have UN Volunteers. You can just Google UNV. They’re not unpaid; they receive a stipend. I ought to know the proper term for what you get as a UNV, but your contribution to the UN is valuable.

So, working with us directly through UN Volunteers and the third option is we have 13 national committees, and people can support us through those national committees. There are also other ways to get involved through our campaigns. A good one, obviously from where you’re sitting, is the HeForShe campaign, which is about male allyship. It has various ideas for what you can do as a man in your workplace, in your family, with your friends, around calling out sexism, and so on. Our website is a good place to start and find engagement ideas. We’d love to have people get involved.

Jacobsen: Thank you for the opportunity and your time today, Daniel. I appreciate it.

Seymour: It was a pleasure talking to you and a good discussion. We appreciate it. Take care.

Jacobsen: It was a pleasure talking to you, Daniel. Thank you.

Seymour: Excellent. Thank you, too. Bye-bye.

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