Engaging Men, Changing Gender Norms: Directions for Gender-Transformative Action

This advocacy brief from the MenEngage Alliance and the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) explores the importance of changing social norms related to men's ideas and behaviours and examines these questions: Can men support gender equality and learn to live gender-equitable lives? Can men transform the ideas and practices they associate with manhood? Can the spheres where men and boys are socialised and often learn inequitable norms - home, school, work, sports, religion, the media, and others - be changed?

The first part of the brief, "Gender Relations, Gendered Social Norms, and Masculinities", examines the context of societal gender norms and their impact on behaviours. Many cultures' traditional, usually inequitable, gender norms contrast with emerging, gender equitable ones. For example, it is the norm for men not to question another man's autonomy in his own home, including the use of violence against his wife and children. A more equitable norm says that it is men's responsibility to speak out against physical, sexual, or emotional abuse being committed by other men. While there can be no single, global definition of what equitable norms for men should be, the participants at the 2009 Global Symposium on Engaging Men and Boys in Gender Equality affirmed this as a starting list:

• "Never commit, condone, or remain silent about men's violence again women or against other men;
• Respect and support girls and women as equal members of society in all walks of life;
• Share equitably and enthusiastically in care-giving, child rearing and home-making, treating boys/sons and girls/daughters equally;
• Make mutual decisions around sexual and reproductive health issues as well as those in other intimate domains;
• Express sexuality free of stereotypes, coercion or violence in ways that are safe, pleasurable and mutually desired;
• Feel proud without necessarily being the sole breadwinner, or a father (especially of sons), or having many sexual partners, or being aggressive;
• Accept and feel comfortable with aspects of men's own personalities and with those of other men that may not follow 'traditional' notions of what it means to be men;
• Feel comfortable expressing emotions in positive and non-violent ways;
• Be capable of forming emotionally supportive friendships with men as well as women."

There are challenges associated with changing gender norms because they reflect deeper social structures and are held in place and reinforced by numerous social institutions. However, as the brief outlines, there are numerous factors that encourage people to question their own deeply held beliefs and allow social actors to intervene and challenge harmful gender norms. For example, though boys and men are told in some societies that they are superior to women and girls, their life experiences often tell them otherwise in the form of powerful, capable women.

How much, though, are men's beliefs and behaviours actually changing, and how can we speed up this change? To explore these questions, the brief describes the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), which has gauged men's support (or rejection) of gender equality of more than 20,000 men and women in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Brazil, Chile, Croatia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, India, Mali, Mexico, and Rwanda. Among the findings: Younger men and men with some secondary education are more likely to have gender-equitable attitudes and gender-equitable behaviours and to support gender-equitable policies. Another finding: Men with more equitable attitudes generally had better mental health, were happier overall, and reported more satisfying relationships with their partners. IMAGES data also found that men who reported that their own fathers participated in care work and equitable decision-making with their mothers were themselves more likely to repeat this pattern in their homes. Within the MenEngage Alliance, there is a wide range of national and local programmes focused on promoting more involved fatherhood, teaching nurturing and parenting skills (including keeping violence out of parenting), and promoting equitable parenting relationships and gender-equitable views of girls and boys. Examples of policies in various countries that institutionalise fathers' involvement and thus influence gender norms are provided here.

In brief, social norms interventions involve:

1. Collecting data to measure actual norms and behaviours. The structure of such questionnaires is usually a series of parallel questions asking what the respondent thinks and does, and then asking what he thinks most of his peers believe or do. This can be conducted on a large scale or within a school, sports team, or classroom.
2. Choosing the key normative message based on the collected data - for example, 80% of the boys in a given secondary school think it is wrong to pressure a girl to have sex.
3. Selecting the normative message delivery strategy. Is it a public campaign with billboards and radio ads? A campaign with handmade posters around a school? Will it be delivered in small group workshops or classrooms (as an exercise that also includes data collection)?
4. Testing the message and any campaign materials with the intended group.
5. Delivering and evaluating the effectiveness of the campaign or activity.

Several short case studies are offered to illustrate the success of social norm change initiatives around the world. To cite only 2 examples from the brief: UNFPA is working with the Turkish government's Directorate of Religious Affairs to educate imams and other religious leaders and scholars about gender equality and their role in ending violence against women. In another example, from Mumbai, India, a consortium of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) that included MenEngage partners developed a programme of school festivals. Leading up to it, students designed posters and wrote comic strips and stories. On the actual day, there were games, role-playing, and races based on the programme themes - e.g., a contest involved both girls and boys in a race to stitch a button, dribble a ball, and fold a shirt in an effort to give greater value to women's/girls' traditional skills and make the point that these are indeed skills both girls and boys can learn. All this hinges on an observation by scholars researching men and masculinities: "For almost all issues, boys are more concerned with what other boys think and do then with what girls think and do. They look to their peers and men as models for shaping their own behavior as boys" (Berkowitz, Jaffe, Peacock, Rosenbluth, and Sousa, 2003). To that end, a UNFPA- supported initiative in Nicaragua called "Que Tuani No Ser Machista" worked with boys aged 10–15 years on preventing sexual violence and adolescent pregnancy. Using group education and advocacy that promotes respect for women and girls and non-violent behaviour, the initiative prompted young men to reflect on who defines what it means to be macho and why.

The final section highlights: 1) two underlying principles for work to shift gender norms among men and boys: (i)gender-equitable and (ii) focused on human rights and equality (This involves complementarity to work with women and girls and includes addressing the gendered vulnerabilities of men by, for instance, opposing discrimination against gay, bisexual, and transgender men.) and 2) key components for successfully engaging men and boys to transform gender norms, including:

• Community-based collaboration and broad-based partnerships that allow for a discussion of masculine norms to be translated into the concerns of different parts of the population and that promote accountability to women's organisations;
• Work that takes place within public institutions - e.g., in schools, places where negative gender norms are frequently reinforced and so can be sites to develop programmes, teacher training, teaching materials, and male student activism in partnership with female student activism; and
• Creation of safety for stepping out of the "gender box" for men and boys, women and girls, which can mean finding ways to challenge oppressive and destructive behaviour under the guidance of positive male leaders and role models - reaching out to men with empathy and compassion rather than shaming and humiliating men, thus creating defensiveness;
• Messages showing what men and boys will gain from a more gender-equitable world without violent versions of manhood;
• Legal reform and shifts in social policy to accelerate the pace of change and effect permanent shifts in gender relations and gender norms; and
• Creation of conditions for boys and men to redefine the norms of manhood for themselves and to own that change (in partnership and constant dialogue with women and girls) - e.g., through efforts like MenCare and the White Ribbon Campaign, which hinge on the knowledge that local partners know best how to reach the men and boys in their own communities, workplaces, places of worship, and schools.

In conclusion, the brief notes that "[e]vidence is emerging that men and boys around the world are increasingly accepting gender equality and more equitable norms....The key to gender norm change is to provoke it and speed it up from within, acknowledging and forming alliances with those men and boys who already believe in gender equality, and identifying the conditions necessary to scale programs up in schools, the workplace, the health sector and other spaces where millions can be reached. All of this must be supported by public policies that reinforce gender equality and include penalties for those who violate rights. It must also include efforts to assess both the implementation and impact of gender equality policies, including efforts to engage men and boys in norm change."