Working with Boys and Men
This publication is a companion to Instituto Promundo's Young Men and HIV Prevention: A toolkit for action. It offers a series of tools adapted from various research for young men's reproductive health and HIV/AIDS prevention needs, from exploring gender identities in workshops to checklists for clinics.
In recent years most of the children's and women's wellbeing and gender equality programmes have largely focused on women and girls as beneficiaries and agents of change. However, the conceptual shift from Women in Development (WID) to Gender and Development (GAD), which has been taking place since the 1980s, was partly borne out of recognition of the inadequacies of focusing on women and girls in isolation. GAD approaches necessitate a focus on men/boys as well as women/girls. Since the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD) in Cairo, international programmes have had a broad mandate to serve the needs of women and men of all ages and to address gender inequities. The belief that it is desirable to involve boys and men in efforts towards gender equality is now becoming institutionalised in the philosophies and programmes of the UN and other international and national organisations.
Engaging Men and Boys in GBV Prevention in Conflict and Emergency-Response Settings: A Workshop Module
This module is designed to build the skill of participants working to engage boys and men in gender-based violence (GBV) prevention and reproductive health (RH) in conflict and other emergency-response settings. The two-day participatory module provides a framework to discuss various strategies for male engagement based on the phases of prevention and response in conflict and displacement.
Gender equality has long been synonymous with women and their struggle for economic independence, equal pay, and equal power. It has also been a key principle in eliminating oppression and violence.
However, gender equality is about both men and women. Men spend less time together with their own children, are more prone to accidents, are over-represented in crime statistics, and drop out more often from upper secondary education. These examples indicate that men would have much to gain from true gender equality. Men are under-represented in the teaching professions in preschools and schools, in nursing and children's social services. At the same time, men still sit in the majority of positions of power in society and they still make more money than women. It is mainly men who are the perpetrators of domestic violence.
In recent years there have been positive changes in the role of males in society. It has been almost 20 years since the Committee on Male Roles in 1991 presented its recommendations. The Committee on Male Roles pointed out the following goals: the reallocation of power between women and men, more time for fathers to care for their own children both before and after a family breakup, reduced gender differences in choice of education and training and the prevention of men's violence against women; all of these were to be central goals for the future work towards gender equality. In several areas the development in the period has been positive. In particular, there is reason to look at the development in the home, and the increased contact between fathers and their children. In other areas, however, the development has been stagnant or negative. While women have entered previous male arenas in the working life, there has not been any increase in employment of men in the health and care giving sectors. In the education sector men constitute a smaller group today than 15 years ago. Consequently, there is reason to reiterate the goals stated by the committee.
In this report, seven masculinity researchers write about masculinity in different parts of the world and about how masculinity is often linked to violence. These acts of violence are committed not only against women and children, but also against other men. The writers suggest a number of ways in which men can be involved in working to combat men’s violence.
Innovative interventions are important so that violent, warlike activity and its related ideas of masculinity and femininity are not carried over into post-war daily life. This 9-page issue brief provides an overview.
This discusses the characteristics of effective programs, provides a rationale for terminology (risk reduction/deterrence vs. prevention), and reviews critical elements of sexual assault prevention and risk reduction programs for men and/or women.
This document continues the discussion in Part One by providing an overview of best practices in prevention, the content and format of men's prevention programs, and an overview of different program philosophies or pedagogies.
This document provides an overview of current efforts involving men in the prevention of violence against women. It discusses men's role in prevention, what is effective in men's prevention, and cultural issues and considerations in working with men,
ISSUE: Four Latin American NGOs have collaborated with PROMUNDO Institute (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) since 1998 to call greater attention to the needs and realities of young men ages 15-24 in sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS and gender violence prevention, and to engage them in HIV/AIDS prevention.