New toolkit identifies how to reduce backlash and build support in engaging men in violence prevention and gender equality work
Efforts to prevent domestic violence and build gender equality in Australia often meet resistance. Some people push back, responding with criticism and hostility to education or training or to community campaigns. A new guide provides practical strategies for practitioners, advocates, and educators in reducing resistance and building support.
Resources
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NOTE: Now also see the 5-page Policy Brief, summarising this report and released in November 2021, available here.
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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 Working Together with Men resource is for people interested in creating projects that work with men to prevent violence against women in their communities.
This is a grassroots, community mobilisation approach that has been piloted across the west of Melbourne (Australia) since 2016. We used what we learnt from these pilots to create a project model that can be reproduced anywhere.
This report explores some of the latest discussions on key themes and challenges for MenEngage Alliance. It offers ways forward to ensure our collective work makes a real contribution to feminist agendas and promotes the rights of all women and girls, and people of diverse sexual orientations and gender identities. Topics include:
How can we use communications and social marketing strategies to engage men in building healthier masculinities? What appeals and language work in reaching, engaging, and changing men?
Women’s Health in the South East, a community organisation in Melbourne, organised a webinar titled “Healthier Masculinities and Values-Based Messaging: In Theory and in Practice”, held on April 8 2020.
In this XY collection, we present podcasts focused on men and masculinities. Thank you to William McInerney, University of Cambridge, for compiling many of these.
As part of the White Ribbon Campaign in Australia, White Ribbon Australia produced the White Ribbon Policy and Research Series, focused on the prevention of men’s violence against women. This comprised a series of papers, with the first in 2010 and the last in 2017. Here, we have collected these papers.
2017
Efforts to promote gender equality and violence prevention in workplaces and organisations often meet resistance. Resistance takes a variety of forms, from denial of the problem, to inaction, to victim-blaming, to outright attack. How should we respond to resistance and backlash? And, how can we make resistance less likely in the first place?
Everyday sexism is a serious problem. Sexist jokes and comments, intrusive and harassing treatment, and other behaviours are a near-daily experience for many women. They cause direct harm, and they contribute to wider gender inequalities. Everyday sexism is routine, invisible, and often excused or ignored.
So, how can we challenge everyday sexism? What can you say when your uncle makes a sexist joke at the Christmas dinner? What can you do when your workmate comments on a passing woman’s appearance? How can you respond when your mum says that women need to be more careful to avoid rape? What can you do when some guy on the train is making a young women uncomfortable?