Working with men on gender equality

Volume 21, Issue 1, March 2013

This issue of Gender & Development is a follow-up to our 1997 issue, Men and Masculinity, in which authors mapped out the terrain – considering the connections between gender and development as a field of activism and research – and provided insights into ‘masculinities’, that is, men’s gender identities, interests and needs.

Some 15 years later, working with men on gender equality is much more widespread, and debates are under way about how this work should be done in future. Is it, as some argue, an issue which needs to be integrated into ‘gender and development’, which has until now focused on working with women? Or are there reasons for seeing this work as separate and complementary? During the planning of this new issue, authors from policy and practice backgrounds, as well as academic researchers, were asked to share their experience of feminist work with men, with these questions in mind.

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For free access to the articles in the Working with men on gender equality issue, please visit the Publications section of the Oxfam Policy & Practice website, and search the site using the article title or author name.

You can access the Introduction and the Resources and Book Reviews sections for the Working with men on gender issues, free, below.

Editorial

Introduction: Working with men on gender equality
Caroline Sweetman

Articles

‘I can do women’s work’: reflections on engaging men as allies in women’s economic empowerment in Rwanda
Henny Slegh, Gary Barker, Augustin Kimonyo, Prudence Ndolimana and Matt Bannerman

Promoting male involvement in family planning in Vietnam and India: HealthBridge experience
Lisa MacDonald, Lori Jones, Phaeba Thomas, Le Thi Thu, Sian FitzGerald and Debra Efroymson

‘Before the war, I was a man’: men and masculinities in the Eastern Democratic Republic of Congo
Desiree Lwambo

Sympathetic advocates: male parliamentarians sharing responsibility for gender equality
Sonia Palmieri

‘Because I am a man, I should be gentle to my wife and my children’: positive masculinity to stop gender-based violence in a coastal district in Vietnam
Tu-Anh Hoang, Trang Thu Quach and Tam Thanh Tran

Domestic violence prevention through the Constructing Violence-free Masculinities programme: an experience from Peru
Rhoda Mitchell

‘One Man Can’: shifts in fatherhood beliefs and parenting practices following a gender-transformative programme in Eastern Cape, South Africa
Wessel van den Berg, Lynn Hendricks, Abigail Hatcher, Dean Peacock, Patrick Godana and Shari Dworkin

Whose turn to do the dishes? Transforming gender attitudes and behaviours among very young adolescents in Nepal
Rebecka Lundgren, Miranda Beckman, Surendra Prasad Chaurasiya, Bhawna Subhedi and Brad Kerner

Where the boys are: engaging young adolescent boys in support of girls’ education and leadership
Stephanie Baric

Men’s involvement in gender equality – European perspectives
Sandy Ruxton and Nikki van der Gaag