Articles

Calls for greater male participation are now a commonplace in work on sexual and reproductive health and rights. The need to engage men in efforts to prevent sexual and gender-based violence (SGBV) and promote sexual health and gender equality is well accepted. But we know less about the optimal forms of such engagement, particularly when it comes to moving beyond a focus on changing individual men’s attitudes and behaviours.

I’ve often found myself trying to explain to people that rape culture and patriarchy aren’t just bad for women. If you draw attention to a form of violence that is primarily aimed at women by men, and a form of social oppression that is intended to provide men with dominance over women, a lot of people will think you must be hostile to men, or want to take something away from men. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The World Development Report (WDR) 2012 has recently been released, documenting the state of Gender Equality and Development around the world. The WDR is a yearly report documenting the state of development around the world, and it put out by the World Bank (WB). The report attempts to tackle a vast array of topics and attempts to address the state of gender equality around the globe.
There is a new, international collective of men opposed to prostitution, called ZeroMacho.  The collective, based in France, so far has collected over 600 signatures in more than 30 countries in favour of the abolition of prostitution. They have asked XY to spread the word. See www.zeromacho.eu/. Their manifesto is available in English here: http://www.zeromacho.eu/anglais.html.
During the run up to Christmas and into the New Year, our attention in the UK was brought several times to what worryingly seemed like a recurring story in the press about a man who had just murdered members of his family.

The first version of the story in December took the form of a newly unemployed policeman -Tobias Day- who killed his wife, his six-year-old daughter and seriously injured his two other children before then killing himself.

We have had 25 years of research on men and masculinities. The relationship between men as gendered beings, power and change has been central in this research. This article presents some of the main findings that most researchers within critical studies on men will agree on, and then it discusses how to better understand men’s relationship to power and marginalization, change and gender equality in future research. It is explorative in its style, and an invitation to further debates on these important questions.
The paper presents an overview of the role men can play in combatting violence against women. After a short introduction on the broader development in the thinking of men and violence and the changes in the perspectives on men’s violence, different initiatives are presented. These are grouped into general prevention strategies, treatment programs, youth and schools and then fatherhood. The last part is devoted to recommendations for further actions.

Courses focused on men, masculinities, and gender are an increasingly common element of university curricula in such areas as Sociology, History, Anthropology, Cultural Studies, and Literature. Here, we have begun to collect examples of the guides to or outlines of particular courses. You are most welcome to add your courses.

This talk offers a stocktake of the White Ribbon Campaign in Australia: what it has achieved so far, the obstacles it faces, and the ways forward. I begin with an inspiring and accessible overview of the campaign: its character, its components, and its significance. I describe the campaign’s real achievements, its contributions to positive social change in community attitudes, relationships, and policy. I highlight the obstacles which the campaign faces. And I end by spelling out the key steps which can be taken – by ordinary men and women, policy-makers, managers, sporting bodies, and others – to make a difference. I urge that we use the F-word – feminism – to guide our efforts.

A new report highlights the everyday actions men can take to help reduce and prevent men’s violence against women. The report is titled Men Speak Up: A toolkit for action in men’s daily lives, and it was released on November 25th, the International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women.

The report is available in PDF below.