How do we prevent our sons from becoming rapists?
Media headlines lately have been dominated by violence – young men’s violence against other men outside pubs and in the street, and men’s sexual assaults of women. Most boys and men do not use violence. But a minority do. The confronting truth is, some of the boys growing up right now will force or pressure a girl or woman into sex.
Meaningful engagement with men and boys is increasingly recognized as critical to gender equality and equity, necessary not only for women’s empowerment, but also for transforming the social and gender norms that reinforce patriarchy and inequality and harm both women and men. The primary challenge embedded in this work is how to engage men and boys effectively without instrumentalizing them as a pathway to women’s empowerment on the one hand, or marginalizing women and girls in gender equity work on the other.
This working paper:
Please see below for the full report, in PDF.
How can parents raise feminist sons? How, for example, can mothers and fathers encourage their sons to grow up to respect girls and women? Here are some recent and accessible discussions of raising boys:
Also see the bibiography of works here: http://www.xyonline.net/content/ii-raising-sons-raising-boys. And these online pieces:
Call For Papers: The Future of Fatherhood: What’s next in fathering practice and research?
The EMERGE (Engendering Men: Evidence on Routes to Gender Equality) project has produced a new policy briefing which makes the case for re-framing policy on gender equality in order to more productively factor in men and boys, and suggests actions and approaches that policy makers can take to do this. The briefing, along with an accompanying practice brief and a conceptual framing paper, is available here.
