Institute of Development Studies

Man Trouble? Working with men on gender, power and violence

25 March 2010 

What role do men have in challenging violence against women and girls? What are the links between men's movements and feminist action? How can we build synergies between men's movements that challenge gender power relations and work on homophobia or discrimination on the grounds of class, ethnicity or nationality? How do we reorient work on violence from the domestic sphere to an understanding of the linkages between violence in the home and violence perpetrated by the state? These were some of the questions panellists grappled with at an IDS seminar last week.

Beyond Beijing

The speakers had been convened under a new UNFPA funded collaborative action-learning project of IDS' HIV and Development Programme, entitled ‘Mobilising men to challenge violence against women in institutional settings', which was introduced by Jerker Edström. The IDS-led Realising Rights Research Programme Consortium co-sponsored the event.

Njoki Wainana, the National Gender Adviser with Men from Gender Equality Now in Kenya kicked off discussions by charting our progress since Beijing. She reflected on how many men found a focus on gender based violence and on girls and young women very threatening. Progress in changing laws and policy to protect women has been accompanied by a backlash men's movement in Kenya that is reacting to the threat this poses to patriarchy and male privilege. Challenges remain in terms of how we respond to claims that the ‘boy child' has been neglected in our discussions about violence and the intersections between gender and sexual violence and HIV, poverty and other forms of disadvantage.

The structural dimensions 

Backlash was a topic returned to in the presentation by Abhijit Das, Director of the Center for Health and Social Justice in India. He reflected on the history of men's movements to combat violence against women in Uttar Pradesh - how the ‘Stop Tolerating Violence' campaign worked with the men who are silent and in their silence complicit. Their initial focus was domestic but over time they realised that they needed to address other structural dimensions, particularly policy. Despite a more enabling national policy environment for women's rights, including a Domestic Violence Act, there are still very high rates of violence against women with an increasing preference for male children seen in a rise of sex selective abortions, a reinforcement of family values and gender stereotypes as well as a re-politicisation of caste, religion and nationalism. This has tremendous implications for how men view themselves and how they construct their identities.

Gender, sexuality and other social constructs

Chris Dolan, Director of Refugee Law Project, Uganda explored the subject from his experience working with refugees and internally displaced people including gay and lesbian asylum seekers and male sex workers. He argued that we are made up of a number of identities and we use them in different ways at different times - if one identity gets weakened what do you do to compensate? For example, is super-patriotism a response to a perceived lack of male power and self-esteem? How does that then feed into militarisation and more violent expressions of masculinity?

Chris made the case that we should explore the shared or linked oppressions of men and women and tackle the problem in ways that would be truly liberating - dismantling and reconstructing the institutions that perpetuate oppression, ‘Instead of banging our head against glass ceilings why don't we just walk out of the room?'

Exploiting the fissures in the gender order

Discussions were brought to a close with a presentation by Alan Greig who gave some reflections on the failures of the men's movement - from the perspective of someone who has been part of this campaigning for many years. Alan argued that earlier feminist work to link the private and public spheres has been downplayed with domestic violence being seen in isolation from other forms of violence - particularly the violence of the state against poor, working class people and other disadvantaged groups such as young people. He also lamented the separation of work on masculinity and work with sexual minorities which has led to the creation of separate institutions and financing which doesn't allow for fluidity and movement across expedient yet limiting categories of ‘man'.

We hope that the ‘Mobilising men to challenge violence against women in institutional settings' project will provide an important opportunity to link up grass roots movements in Uganda, Kenya and India to develop campaigns for tackling some of these issues, whilst learning by doing and sharing lessons across the countries and beyond.

To share your thoughts and comments on this story, go to our news commentary page.

Image: Yannis Kontos / Polaris  

Related News

Men, Masculinities and Power

Published: 18 Nov 2009

Related Events

Man Trouble? A panel on directions for work with men on gender, power and violence

Dates: 18 Mar 2010

Related Publications

• Greig, A., Edström, J. and Glyde, J. (2008) 'Men, Sex and HIV: Directions for Politicising Masculinities', IDS In Focus 4, Brighton: IDS

Related Projects

• Realising Rights Research Programme Consortium - (Ongoing)