Trying to change the world? Here are some key resources.
Here are nine free books on how: guides to activism, advocacy, community organising, and social change work. And below them, there are some guides on self-care for activists.
Books on doing activism
Mobilising men is a vital part of social change towards gender equality, but it is under-developed in Australia.
A few weeks ago, I attended a training on gender-based violence, run by a local social service organization, which sought to involve representatives from different community settings in engaging men in anti-violence work. Conversation centered around identifying the ways in which gender-based violence lies on a continuum, ranging from sexist comments and ‘rape jokes’ to sexual assault and domestic violence.
What is the state of gender norms in Australia? To what extent are traditional norms of masculinity still dominant, and to what extent are they shifting or breaking down? Do young men agree with stereotypical constructions of masculinity, and if they do, what implications does this have for their lives and their relations with others? To answer these questions, this webinar draws on two recent Australian surveys, one among young men aged 18 to 30 and another among people in Australia. The webinar then explores how we may reconstruct masculine norms.
When I was a child I thought everyone had a penis.
Or dumdeedle, as our family called them, a name that indicates the awkwardness that hung around male sexuality.
How healthy is sexuality in Australia? What counts as ethical sex? The two most common frameworks here are the Christian framework and a secular, libertarian framework, and we need to go beyond both, towards a more robust framework for an ethical sexuality.
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.
Research suggests that gender egalitarian attitudes have become more common over the past several decades (see Scarborough et al., 2018). However, many people who endorse feminist attitudes distance themselves from the feminist label (Zucker & Bay-Cheng, 2010). In fact, the phenomenon whereby people support feminist principles but reject the feminist moniker is so prevalent that researchers refer to it as “the feminist paradox” (Abowitz, 2008).
There are various claims made by men’s rights advocates (MRAs) that have no basis in truth. They are ‘factoids’, items of unreliable or false information that are reported and repeated so often that they become accepted as fact. On this page, we fact-check some of the inaccurate claims routinely made by MRAs. Additions and revisions are welcome.
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.
