There is now a field of programming and policy focused on ‘engaging men and boys’. This involves efforts self-consciously aimed at men or boys and addressing their involvements in gender in some way, and can be termed the ‘engaging men and boys’ field (Greig & Flood, 2020). The last decade has seen significant growth in this field. Programs and initiatives focused on men and boys have proliferated at local, national, and international levels. The strategies and initiatives in this field have diverse goals, including efforts for example to prevent and reduce men’s use of domestic, family and sexual violence, increase men’s positive involvements in parenting, foster men’s and boys’ sexual and reproductive health, increase men’s domestic and care work, and involve men as allies and advocates for gender equity in workplaces and elsewhere.
The ‘engagement’ of men and boys can be understood in terms of five dimensions: the area or set of issues in which it engages men, how it engages men, the scale at which it takes place, what it is engaging men to do, and when it takes place in terms of male involvement. These five dimensions can be thought of as related to domain, action, size, goals, and time. In practice these dimensions of male engagement overlap, but discussing them separately is useful to highlight different aspects of engagement.
Domain: Efforts to engage men and boys in positive personal and social change take place in relation to a range of issues or domains, including gender-based violence and its prevention, sexual and reproductive health, HIV/AIDS, fathering and care work, men’s health and wellbeing, and other areas. Internationally, there has been an expansion in the areas in which work with men and boys takes place, with new areas including women’s economic empowerment, civil conflict and militarism, climate change (Kato-Wallace, 2016), terrorism (Roose et al., 2022), and political leadership and culture.
Action and Scale: The second dimension involves what strategies are used. One simple way of understanding different strategies for engaging men comes from the violence prevention field. It reflects the ‘ecological model’, a framework in which domestic and sexual violence are recognised as the outcome of risk factors at multiple levels of society (individual, relationship, community, institutional, and societal). Strategies for engaging men can be arranged, from micro to macro, into six levels of intervention: (1) strengthening individual knowledge and skills; (2) promoting community education; (3) educating providers; (4) engaging, strengthening, and mobilising communities; (5) changing organisational practices; and (6) influencing policies and legislation (Flood, 2019, p. 56).
This account of strategies for engaging men and boys combines the second and third dimensions mentioned, action and scale. There are other ways to conceptualise strategies: in terms of the entry points for intervention, the populations who are addressed, the risk factors or antecedents of the problem being targeted, or some combination of these (Flood, 2019, p. 56).
Goals: The fourth dimension of engagement concerns its goals, what it seeks to achieve (Funk, 2018; Pfitzner et al., 2017). Goals may include those listed below. The first goals below are directed at individual men, primarily the direct participants in programs and initiatives, while later goals are directed more at the social norms and social structures that shape men, masculinities, and gender relations.
- ‘Getting’ and ‘keeping’ men: reaching and recruiting men and getting them to attend or turn up to a particular program, and then ‘keeping’ them, sustaining their attendance (Pfitzner et al., 2017)
- Involving men: generating men’s active participation in programs and initiatives
- Changing men: producing change in program participants’ attitudes and behaviours
- Mobilising men: organising and activating men as allies and advocates who participate in public and collective action
- Changing masculine norms: shifting the social norms or ideologies of masculinity that are dominant in particular communities or societies
- Changing masculine structures: transforming the wider institutions, laws and policies, or social structures that sustain gender roles and relations.
Time: The final dimension of engagement is to do with when it takes place, its temporal order. Activities involving men and boys typically take place in a certain order, as follows: (1) initial outreach to and recruitment of previously unengaged men and boys; (2) ongoing efforts to shift men’s and boys’ attitudes and behaviours; and (3) strategies aimed then at mobilising men and boys as advocates for collective change (Casey et al., 2016).
Citation
Flood, M. (2024). Theorising male engagement: domain, action, scale, goals, and time. https://xyonline.net/content/theorising-male-engagement-domain-action-scale-goals-and-time. Unpublished.
References
Casey, E. A., Carlson, J., Two Bulls, S., & Yager, A. (2016). Gender Transformative Approaches to Engaging Men in Gender-Based Violence Prevention: A Review and Conceptual Model. Trauma, Violence, & Abuse, 19(2), 231-246. https://doi.org/10.1177/1524838016650191
Flood, M. (2019). Engaging Men and Boys in Violence Prevention. Palgrave Macmillan.
Funk, R. E. (2018). Clarifying the “Engaging” in Engaging Men.
Greig, A., & Flood, M. (2020). Work with Men and Boys for Gender Equality: A Review of Field Formation, Evidence Base and Future Directions. UN Women.
Kato-Wallace, J. (2016). Men, Masculinities & Climate Change: A Discussion Paper.
Pfitzner, N., Humphreys, C., & Hegarty, K. (2017). Research Review: Engaging men: a multi‐level model to support father engagement. Child & Family Social Work, 22(1), 537-547.
Roose, J. M., Flood, M., Greig, A., Alfano, M., & Copland, S. (2022). Masculinity and violent extremism. Springer Nature.
Further reading
ICRW. (2018). Gender Equity and Male Engagement: It Only Works When Everyone Plays. Washington DC: International Center for Research on Women.