Canadian prime minister, speaking at UN meeting on gender equality, says he will ‘keep saying it loud and clear until it is met with a shrug’

Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau says he has no problem calling himself a feminist but that every time he mentions it, the “Twitterverse explodes”.

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Trudeau, who last year unveiled a cabinet with an equal number of men and women “because it’s 2015”, spoke on Wednesday during the UN’s 60th session of the commission on the status of women.

“I am going to keep saying loud and clear that I am a feminist until it is met with a shrug,” Trudeau told diplomats, advocacy group representatives and the head of UN Women, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka.

“Why, every time I say I’m a feminist, does the Twitterverse explode?” he asked, adding that calling for gender equality should be a mainstream political position.

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

Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) I am a feminist. I’m proud to be a feminist. #upfordebate

Speaking at the summit, Trudeau reaffirmed his support for gender equality when he kicked off an hour-long discussion punctuated by repeated cheers and applause.

He called on world leaders to follow Canada’s lead when appointing their own cabinets.

“Any world leaders who tell me ‘I’d love to, I just can’t do that with the current configuration of our parliament or of my party’, I say: ‘Well, what are you doing to change that configuration and draw out those extraordinary women who can be leaders that we need?’,” he said.

Asked where his commitment to gender equality originated, the 44-year-old cast it as a fight between generations.

“For my generation and younger, it’s all sort of a ‘duh’,” said Trudeau. “The fact that [it] gets such a reaction from the powers and the authority structure that surrounds us really shows how much work we still have to do.”

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His mother, Margaret Trudeau, considered herself a woman’s rights activist “even back in the early days”, he added.

Trudeau, son of late prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau, also referred to a key legacy of his father in promoting human rights, which he said stopped short of embracing feminism as a factor.

Speaking about his government’s other priorities concerning women, Trudeau said these included a focus on equal pay and an inquiry on missing and murdered indigenous women.

Canada ranked 30th globally in the World Economic Forum’s 2015 global gender gap report, which measures how equitably countries are distributing their resources between women and men, putting it behind nations such as Rwanda, South Africa and the United States.

Trudeau announced earlier that Canada would campaign for a seat on the United Nations security council in 2021-2022.

Associated Press and the Thomson Reuters Foundation contributed to this report.