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The
United Nations Division for the Advancement of
Women (DAW)
organized, in cooperation with the International
Labour Organization
(ILO) and the Joint United Nations Programme on
HIV/AIDS (UNAIDS), an Expert Group Meeting on
"the role of men and boys in achieving gender
equality" which took place in Brasilia, Brazil
from 21 to 24 October
2003.
Introduction
The
shift from a focus on women to the perspective
of gender relations
created the opportunity to give increased attention
to men and boys.
Over the years a stronger focus has developed
on the positive role men
and boys can and do play in promoting women's
empowerment in the home,
the community, the labour market and the workplace.
There
is an increasing recognition that a focus on the
role of men and
boys in the achievement of gender equality will
not only benefit women
and girls as well as men and boys, but can contribute
effectively to the
achievement of human rights, the promotion of
democracy, poverty
eradication, economic justice and other development
goals. In particular
it has been emphasized that attention to men and
boys can make a major
contribution to the fight against HIV/AIDS; indeed
without the active
involvement of men and boys it will be difficult,
if not impossible, to
achieve the international goals on HIV/AIDS.
The
expert group meeting considered socialization
and the education
process and the role of men and boys in relation
to the workplace and
the economy, sexuality, health and HIV/AIDS, domestic
work and work/life
balance, and gender based violence. The experts
adopted recommendations
addressed to Governments, international organizations,
including the
United Nations, the private sector, including
employers, trade unions,
civil society, religious organizations, non-governmental
organizations,
sport groups, armed forces and the police, research
institutes,
community agencies, and the media.
Rationale
The
rationale for involving men and boys in gender
equality is manifold, and will continue to develop
and expand as goals are realised and different
gender and social arrangements emerge around the
world. Men and boys must be brought into the framework
of strategy, policy and micro politics of gender
equality programmes.
In
the formal economy, there is enormous pressure
on men to spend longer
hours in the workplace. In some occupational groups
this results in a
life practically consumed by "work".
The negative side to a poor "work/family
life balance" is that there is little time
to share with partners and children, and it is
difficult to be a good father in any way except
as economic provider.
Conventional
divisions between men's and women's roles and
expectations
also narrow men's cultural experience. In education,
for instance, boys and men predominate as students
in "technical" courses and natural sciences,
but are underrepresented in humanities, creative
arts, social sciences and human services. Power
oriented masculinities are often associated with
ethnocentrism, rejection of other cultures and
the maintenance of inflexible and rigid barriers
to change.
Research
on violence, both personal and collective, has
shown a persisting connection of violence to men
as a group, and specifically to dominance-oriented
masculinities in hierarchical gender systems.
Achieving gender equality will not totally end
violence, which has many roots. But moving towards
gender equality is an important step towards reducing
violence. Men, who are victims of many forms of
personal and institutional violence, primarily
at the hands of other men, have a great deal to
gain from a more peaceful non-violent world.
Stament
of principles
The
experts proposed that the following set of principles
should govern
policies and programmes addressing the role of
men and boys in achieving
gender equality:
- Emphasize
the active stake that men and boys have in gender
equality, that is, the gains to men and boys.
- Develop
integrated gender policies rather than separate
and parallel
policies for women and men.
- Recognize
that working with men and boys toward the goal
of gender
equality faces short-term constraints and risks,
but offers the
potential for significant progress toward achieving
gender equality in
the long run.
- Work
with men as allies to women in achieving gender
equality
through collaboration with, and accountability
to, women's organizations and feminist movements.
- Ensure
that funding for gender equality work with men
and boys is
not at the expense of existing or future funding
for empowerment work
with women and girls.
- Define
specific roles for men and boys in developing
and
implementing policies and programmes for gender
equality.
- Work
with the men in positions of greatest power
and influence (as
local and national leaders, and policy makers)
to ensure their
commitment to and action on promoting gender
equality goals.
- Recognize
the well-being of men and boys as a legitimate
aim of
gender equality measures.
- Recognize
the diversity of men's situation and assess
the specific
situations, interests, identities and privileges
of different groups of
men and boys and address their specific needs.
- Acknowledge
that while men are responsible for gender norms
that
damage the lives of women and men they also
suffer under these norms in different ways.
- Build
on existing resistance to and questioning of
gender norms
that perpetuate gender inequality by some men
and boys.
- Develop
policies, programmes, practices and processes
that both
hold men accountable for their roles in structures
of male power and at
the same time assist men in learning about and
healing from the harmful effects of gender norms
in their own lives.
- Based
on men's multiple roles in relation to violence
(including as
perpetrators, survivors, witnesses and bystanders),
mobilize men to end the interpersonal and institutional
violence that sustains and results from gender
inequality.
- Recognize
sexuality as a fundamental dimension of human
relations
in which gender inequality is often expressed
and enforced. Respond to
the complexity and diversity of meanings, desires,
practices and
identities in men's sexual lives. Address the
connections between
misogyny and homophobia in the construction
of harmful norms of male and female sexuality.
- Work
with the capacities and potential of men and
boys to be
actively involved in achieving gender equality.
Positive aspects of
traditional male roles can be drawn upon, such
as strength, courage and leadership.
- Ground
gender equality work with men and boys in the
context of
local cultures and traditions, as well as community
practices and
structures, that are supportive of equal relationships
between women and men.
- Ensure
that research on issues related to men and boys
and the goal
of gender equality include participatory or
community-controlled
research, with mechanisms to develop the capacities
of communities to design and conduct their own
research.
- Connect
gender equality measures involving men and boys
with a
general framework of human rights and social
justice. Within this
framework, use shared experiences of multiple
forms of oppression to
promote solidarity between women and men for
social justice and gender equality.
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