The UN’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 UN 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.”