So often you hear about celebrities lending their voices to a cause, but typically those voices are accompanied by a makeup-covered face. For International Women’s Day, the Clinton Foundation, along with the help of some of today’s top stars, decided to take those faces out of the equation for the “Not There” initiative.
Posting on the site Notthere.Noceilings.org, the Clinton Foundation wrote, “We’re not there yet. On International Women’s Day, the world woke up to find that many women were not there. This symbolic act reflected what a new analysis of women and girls’ progress says about the state of gender equality: we’re NOT THERE yet.”
In the foundation’s new commercial spot, top celebs like Amy Poehler, Cameron Diaz, Sienna Miller, Padma Lakshmi, and Jenny Slate spoke about the struggles women face in the workplace while the camera panned to empty chairs.
“Despite some significant gains, we’re not there yet on gender equality — at home or abroad,” Top Chef host Lakshmi said.
The ladies went on to list some facts, including, “In the U.S. women now earn the majority of college degrees, but we only make up 5 percent of Fortune 500 CEOs. That is a lot of wasted pantsuits,” Slate said.
Diaz also included a commonly referenced and troubling fact: “Women everywhere still don’t earn the same as men. In the U.S. women make just 78 cents to every man’s dollar.”
In addition to the powerful ad, many celebrities also deleted their profile pictures on social media on Sunday, March 8 for International Women’s Day, replacing them with an empty Facebook-like icon that read “Not-There.Org.”
“For #IWD2015 I'm taking a stand for gender equality and joining others to be #notthere. Visit: http://Not-There.org,” Oscar winner Lupita Nyong’o captioned a shot of her empty profile picture.
Other stars who joined in included Reese Witherspoon, Chrissy Teigen, and The Blacklist’s Megan Boone.
Though not everyone swapped out their profile pictures, activists like Lena Dunham, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Emma Watson spoke out in favor of gender equality for IWD.
“Shouldn't everyday be all of us equally day? I guess we're #notthere #internationalwomensday @iwd2015 @clintonfoundation,” Paltrow captioned a Flipagram slideshow of images with her female besties.
The British Harry Potter star, hosted a live Q&A for her “HeForShe” campaign, which she posted on her Facebook page in four parts.
“The person that was the recipient of that misogynistic comment or whatever it was, it could make a huge difference to them,” Watson said of speaking out against hateful words. “It could change their day, their month, their year, maybe even their life. It really could. So don’t ever hear in your own head ‘Who am I to say something?’ You are a human being, you are a person, you can 100 percent change the world.”