What is feminism? It is a political movement supporting the equality of sexes in all aspects of public and private life. I often hear men wonder what they can do to support feminism. Here are 10 suggestions for all of us:
Activism & Politics
Involving men in our work towards gender equality is by no means a new idea, but there remains reluctance within women’s movements to promote or embrace it. Engaging men is critical to achieving gender justice; thus this primer addresses strategies and tools for working with men.
... While the concept of Gender Equality is not new, what is relatively new is the concerted effort to revisit men's roles and identities in order to significantly increase men's involvement in gender equal societies. The current policy brief aims to present key rationales, identify principal challenges, and recommend actionable strategies for engaging boys, young and adult men in efforts to achieve gender equality. The goal of the policy brief is to provide policy makers, practitioners, business and the civil society leaders with a framework for developing strategies, implementing programs, and evaluating progress of engaging men in gender equality efforts in all spheres of life.
Most men know that domestic violence and sexual assault are wrong, but we have done little to reduce this violence in our lives, families and communities. Too many men believe common myths about violence, have ignored women's fears and concerns about their safety, and have stayed silent in the face of other men's violence-supportive attitudes and behaviours. At the same time, a growing number of men in Australia are taking public action to help end violence against women.
Violence against women is not a phenomenon limited to Pakistan. Throughout the world, the fairer sex has been suffering from it for centuries. It is only now that men have started realising that it's their duty to protect women from all forms of violence...
Compared with women, men - especially young men - are overwhelmingly involved in all types of violence. Cultural ideas about what it means to be a man often support this violence. But that is not to say that violence is a natural condition for men, or a natural part of being a man. Men are taught to use violence and at times are encouraged to use it. This paper was prepared for a 2003 UNESCAP Sub-regional Training Workshop on the Elimination of Violence Against Women in Partnership with Men.
Emerging programme approaches hold promise in changing gender norms and behaviours among boys and young men, according to this four-page piece from YouthNet, published in 2005.
This 212-page report is an outcome of an expert conference on gender equality under Finland’s Presidency , held in 2006 in Helsinki and focused on men and gender equality. The aim of the conference was to enhance the handling of issues related to men and gender equality as a part of the EU’s gender equality policy. A further aim was to boost the interest in treating men and gender equality as a separate theme in member states’ gender equality policies.
The report includes discussion of four themes:
men’s role in dismantling segregation in education and training,
This article explores the subject of sexual rights and the claims about such rights as they are made by and for men. It considers the different bases of these claims, which range from some men’s experience of sexual oppression to other men’s experience of their gender socialisation. The article highlights the issues of power and privilege, which often lie hidden within such claims and calls for a discourse of ‘men and sexual rights’ that can take account of both gender norms and sexual hierarchies. Central to this call is a conception of accountability that is at once personal and political; the political accountability of duty-bearers to promote and protect the sexual rights of all rights-holders, men and women; and the personal accountability of men in relation to the ways in which their gender privilege serves to deny the sexual rights of others.
First published in the IDS Bulletin, Vol 37 No 5, 2006.