While empowering women, girls, and gender-diverse individuals remains a cornerstone of gender-based violence (GBV) work, boys and male-identifying youth also play a key role in the prevention of GBV. Providing boys and male-identifying youth with opportunities to explore their identities, reflect on their own understandings of masculinity, and advocate for gender equality are some of the ways they can be allies in advocating for transforming social norms.
Working with Boys and Men
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.
Men in politics as agents of gender equitable change is a research project that examines why men in politics decide to support gender equality, how they explain and frame their work in this area, and how their actions are perceived by women politicians, activists and students.
How are domestic and sexual violence workplace issues, and what can we do to prevent and reduce them? This talk provides an accessible introduction to the workplace prevention of domestic and sexual violence. Men in particular have a positive role to play in violence prevention. Professor Flood explores the everyday steps that men can take to make a difference, the mistakes it’s easy to make, and the ways forward in building more respectful, inclusive workplaces for everyone.
Programs that engage men and boys in health promotion and violence prevention are proliferating. Many aim to foster “healthy masculinities”, using education and support to involve men and boys in adopting more positive or gender-equitable forms of selfhood and relating.
This paper offers a critical stocktake of 15 'healthy masculinities' programs in one state in Australia, assessing them against common standards for gender-transformative programming among men and boys.
Men in workplaces can make influential contributions to progress towards gender equality. Most men support principles of fairness and equity in workplaces and most welcome women’s participation in STEM. Despite this, few men so far have actively supported efforts to increase women’s participation. However, male allyship is vital if we are to make progress.
Men must call each other out when they see disrespect, because the behaviour we walk past is the behaviour we accept, writes Keith Tracey-Patte.
It’s now four years since the death of Hannah Clarke and her children and 10 years since the murder of Luke Batty. And here we are again. In the last seven days we have seen three separate atrocities and the violent deaths of more women, children and men.
(Speech by Professor Michael Flood at the launch of The Man Box 2024.)
Let’s think about that model of traditional masculinity, toxic masculinity, dominant masculinity, whatever we want to call it. That version of manhood based on being tough, aggressive, stoic, homophobic, and dominant over women.
Good news and bad news
First, there’s some good news. Most men don’t personally endorse this model of manhood. Most men believe that:
The Working Together with Men (WTWM) model is an evolving and innovative approach for engaging identifying men in allyship. With a unique focus on strengthening men's accountability towards gender equity and violence prevention efforts.
How men can support gender equality is a topic that is rarely talked about. Over the last decade, I researched how men as senior leader and middle managers support gender equality in the work context. My book ‘Men Stepping Forward – Leading Your Organisation on the Path to Inclusion’ shows some practical steps men can take to become change agents for gender equality.