This new book:
By Professor Amanda Keddie and Professor Michael Flood
ASK A MATE is a new app aimed at boys and young men and intended to provide sound, evidence-based advice on topics including relationships, gender, consent, domestic and sexual violence, delivered by high-profile positive male role models who young men are willing to listen to.
ASK A MATE has been created by Beyond DV, an Australian charity focused on shaping a society free from domestic violence.
There is intensified attention in Australia at present to the messages about manhood, good and bad, that boys and young men grow up with.
To leave no child behind, UNESCO developed the first global report of this scope on boys’ disengagement from education, bringing together qualitative and quantitative evidence from over 140 countries. This report provides an overview on the global situation on boys’ disengagement from and disadvantage in education. It identifies factors influencing boys’ participation, progression and learning outcomes in education.
Traditional models of how to be a man face growing criticism in the twenty-first century, with increasing attention to the harms they cause among men, women, and communities. Social norms regarding manhood are diverse across cultures, history, and within any one society. But one version of manhood increasingly is seen as a problem, the version in which men are expected always to be tough, aggressive, risk-taking, stoic, heterosexual, homophobic and transphobic, emotionally inexpressive, hostile to femininity, and dominant.
This report takes stock of educational underachievement among boys and men, examines the evidence on contributing factors, and explores what has been done to address the phenomenon. While female underrepresentation in secondary and tertiary education remain a significant issue in some, particularly low-income, countries, more than 100 countries have lower levels of male secondary and tertiary education enrollment and completion.
I want to start with the rationale for this work. Why are we trying to promote healthy masculinities? What is the problem?
To answer that, I have to start with gender.
I’m using the term ‘gender’ here for the patterns of men’s and women’s lives, boys’ and girls’ lives.
Gender means: the meanings we give to being male and female, and the social organisation of men’s and women’s lives.
Achieving gender equality must, and has, involved efforts to understand the vulnerabilities and risks that adolescent girls and young women face every day – but how much do we know about the realities of adolescent boys and young men? This report takes a deeper look at the daily lives of adolescent boys and young men around the world and at how they can join the movement towards improved health and gender equality.
The Man Box: A study on being a young man in Australia is the first comprehensive study that focuses on the attitudes to manhood and the behaviours of young Australian men aged 18 to 30. It involved an online survey of a representative sample of 1,000 young men from across the country, as well as focus group discussions with two groups of young men.
