UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says he has no problem calling himself a feminist but that every time he mentions it, the “Twitterverse explodes.”

Trudeau, who assembled a Cabinet with an equal number of men and women last year while explaining “because it’s 2015,” spoke Wednesday during the U.N.'s 60th session of the Commission on the Status of Women.

The 44-year old Liberal leader says that calling himself a feminist simply means “I believe in the equality of men and women.” But he says that whenever he makes the claim, he’s asked about it by the media.

The son of late prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, Trudeau also says his mother considered herself a woman’s rights activist “even back in the early days.”