RIGHTS: Engaging Men in Gender Equality Efforts

By Fabiana Frayssinet
RIO DE JANEIRO, Apr 2 (IPS) How many men work in day care centres,
looking after children? How much paternity leave are men entitled to?
How many government programmes to combat domestic violence include
violent men themselves as part of the treatment?

The ball is in the court of national governments, and it is up to them
to answer these questions, according to participants at an international
congress on gender equity.

The first global symposium on Engaging Men and Boys to Achieve Gender
Equity, being held from Monday, Mar. 30 to Friday, Apr. 3 arose, in
fact, out of the deafening official silence on the matter, according to
Marcos Nascimento, co-director of the non-governmental Promundo
Institute.

Over a decade after agreeing that men’s participation is essential
for “overcoming gender inequalities,” governments do not
appear to have fully taken this commitment on board, Nascimento said in
an interview with IPS.

Nascimento belongs to a network of NGOs that address masculinity from a
feminist viewpoint, incorporating a gender perspective.

Any such initiative is bound to “have greater scope” if it is
backed by public policies, he said.

The symposium was organised by the Promundo Institute and Instituto
Papai (Daddy) of Brazil; the White Ribbon Campaign, based in Canada;
Save the Children, an international organisation; MenEngage Global
Alliance, a coalition of NGOs and United Nations agencies; and the
United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA).

Promundo is working for parliamentary approval of a draft law to expand
paternity leave for workers from the five days they are entitled to at
present, to at least a month. Brazilian women workers already have the
right to six months’ maternity leave.

Paternity leave is essential for men to become involved in the care of
their children, a role traditionally allocated to women, activists say.

“If there are positive role models in a family for caregiving by
fathers, in future men may turn out to be more gender-equitable,”
Nascimento said.

The symposium, which has drawn more than 450 representatives from 80
countries, aims to establish dialogue between different actors, in order
to define lines of action and foment knowledge and learning from
initiatives that have already been implemented.

“We are talking about co-responsibility, which is a key word
nowadays,” said Minister Nilcea Freire of the Brazilian
government’s Special Secretariat of Policies for Women (SPM).

“Engaging men in the debate on equal opportunities for men and
women means redistributing responsibilities, so that care-giving and
household work no longer fall exclusively on women’s
shoulders,” the minister told IPS.

On the first day of the symposium, Freire launched a new pilot project
on education and responsibility for men who have committed violence
against women. Developed as part of public policies to combat gender
violence, it is the first of its kind in this South American country of
189 million people.

The project is working initially with a group of 46 men who have
assaulted women. Without doing away with the penalties under Brazilian
law for crimes of violence, the new centre incorporates activities like
group dynamics, workshops, and opportunities to reflect on the ideas and
values that can lead to violence against women.

Based in Nova IguaE7u, a poor district in Rio de Janeiro with high
indices of violence against women, the programme is to be extended into
other regions in the future.

“The intention is to promote the men’s commitment to the
development of new kinds of interpersonal relationships, and to avoid
and prevent violent behaviour within the family,” Fernando Acosta,
the creator of the initiative, told the symposium.

“If men are part of the problem of violence against women, they
must be part of the solution,” Nascimento remarked.

A report presented by the Special Secretariat of Policies for Women
indicates that in 2007, 5,760 women were victims of violence in this
country, mainly at the hands of men.

Debates are also taking place at the symposium along other lines
regarded as having strategic importance for promoting gender equity,
like men’s engagement in matters of sexual and reproductive health
and the prevention and treatment of AIDS.

Studies presented by UNFPA show that the social construction of
masculinity is closely associated with risk-taking behaviour, creating
“an environment where risk is acceptable and even encouraged for
‘real’ men.”

A qualitative research project carried out in nine Latin American
countries revealed that young men and boys aged 10 to 24 are “far
more concerned with achieving and preserving their masculinity than
their health.”

This study, according to UNFPA, confirms that the dominant ideology
underlying masculine attitudes can result in “earlier sexual
initiation and more sexual partners,” less intimacy in sexual
relationships and a reluctance to use condoms.

The deputy director of UNFPA, Purnima Mane, said that views on
masculinity need rethinking, not only because the behaviour of boys and
men affects women and girls, but also because men and boys need to free
themselves from oppressive and stereotyped expectations about their
behaviour that are harmful to their own health and life, as well as the
health and life of their male or female partners.

These behaviours begin in the home, where parents assign girls
“feminine” tasks – washing the dishes, cooking, cleaning,
looking after the children 96 and give boys “masculine” ones
- cutting the lawn, “using Daddy’s tools,” and going out
on the streets at an earlier age.

According to InE9s Alberdi, the executive director of the United
Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM), these social norms and
attitudes should be included in reflections on masculinity, a concept
traditionally framed “in relation to (assumptions about)
women’s inferiority.”

Alberdi, who is on her first visit to Latin America, launched the UNIFEM
report “Progress of the World’s Women 2008/2009: Who Answers to
Women?” in Rio. To encourage “positive” new concepts of
masculinity in men and women, the thinking of boys and men about
fatherhood needs to be focused on “caring, closeness and
tenderness,” she told IPS.

In Spain, Alberdi’s home country, the law provides for biological or
adoptive fathers to take paternity leave of up to 10 weeks, out of the
total of 16 weeks of statutory paid parental leave, she said. The first
six weeks are compulsory maternity leave for women after giving birth,
but the rest of the parental leave period can be freely distributed
between the couple.

The head of UNIFEM said another way that the state should be
“accountable” to women is through “budgets with a gender
perspective” that redirect public spending.

She cited examples of health, education, agriculture and sanitation
policies and small credit funds that are particularly aimed at women.

Alberdi also emphasised the importance of having official data,
statistics and indicators that are disaggregated by gender, as an
information base for designing affirmative action in the future.

In the political, labour and business worlds, Alberdi said it is
necessary to adopt “quota” policies for women’s
participation as a transitory measure designed to promote “a
balance of power and responsibility” between men and women.

On average, barely 18.4 percent of parliamentary seats are occupied by
women worldwide. If the present rate of progress is maintained, it could
take 40 years to achieve the “ideal balance” of between 40 and
60 percent for either sex, she said.

“Spontaneous change is slow,” so transitory measures like
quotas are needed to accelerate the achievement of gender balance,
Alberdi said.

Women in positions of power would reinforce the future implementation of
public policies with a gender perspective to create a more egalitarian
society, she said, thus generating a virtuous cycle for a less machista
and sexist society.