The cost of change: Why men resist gender equality efforts
“But does this mean that engaging men and boys is plain sailing and without challenges? Far from it.” That was the ending to our previous story. As President Donald Trump said during his inauguration, promises made are promises kept.
Experiences from India, captured in Unesco’s 2024 publication Engaging men and boys: A report on pathways to gender equality, show that such a venture has to contend with entrenched patriarchal influences that complicate implementation. These men and boys are products of the social and cultural systems they have grown up in. Abandoning what they have been taught requires skillful navigation around norms and attitudes that itself creates fear and uncertainty about what change portends.
Moreover, the gender issues are diverse and intersectional, implying the need to consider multiple variables. If these complexities are overlooked, then programmes may not be comprehensive, inclusive or effective. But addressing them simultaneously also requires a nuanced approach to ensure resonance with various individuals engaged and their audiences.
The document notes that the programme could easily become counterproductive and self-defeating in that “efforts to redefine masculinity positively may inadvertently reinforce traditional gender norms and roles, thus perpetuating existing inequalities.” This could result from backlash and movements promoting hyper-masculinities, which can erode the confidence of the men and boys involved in transformative work.
The initiatives additionally noted that addressing gender issues at all the levels of the ecological model was not easy. In this sense, dealing with personal level issues does not necessarily translate into transforming the policy level and structural factors that create and perpetuate gender imbalances. In this regard, specific strategies must be evolved to address various levels on their own as well as conjunctively. This requires vertical and horizontal thinking, planning and implementation.
A key barrier noted was that getting the buy-in of stakeholders takes time, especially because the effects may not be easily visible or immediate. This means that financial support for such work may be slow in coming, which creates inertia and can even kill the initial enthusiasm. This gets complicated by the biases and priorities of the potential partners.
Given that such programmes are dealing with ideological issues, they can sound abstract, hence not attractive to communities that are pressed by immediate problems and are looking for solutions to their practical needs. Such pressures are also experienced by men and boys themselves because they equally have needs to meet and expectations to fulfil.
If the engagement is not helping them realise the same, then it is likely to be treated as an irrelevant waste of time. This is particularly because they have to sacrifice time, resources and other activities to be involved. Logically, if the opportunity cost is higher than the actual and perceived benefits, the interest of the boys and men is likely to wane.
Since these programmes are dealing with qualitative aspects of life, it also becomes difficult to measure their impact, if one adopts the conventional approaches to evaluation that look for quantifiable results. The cause-effect relationship is slippery, which might create the impression that the programmes are not actually achieving the desired goals and creating any impact.
The men and boys themselves may feel threatened by transformative work because they are beneficiaries of the existing system. Changing it means readjusting and foregoing certain of their privileges and powers. This can breed resentment and lead to own disapproval of the programme. This then requires a deep understanding of the underlying philosophy and why gender equality is useful to society. Inevitably, to the extent that these programmes depended on donor support, they were susceptible to slow down once the funding ended.
To deal with these challenges, the publication makes a raft of recommendations. They include: starting gender-transformative education programmes in order to shape attitudes early; creating safe and inclusive spaces for critical dialogue among men and boys; adopting an intersectional approach; and actively engaging with policy-makers, institutional stakeholders and funders.
Others are empowering local leadership and initiatives and developing a comprehensive monitoring and evaluation system which also looks at how the initiative contributes to women’s empowerment. This requires measures to receive and incorporate feedback from women, as well as collaboration with feminist organisations. A critical recommendation for sustenance is to have an approach embedded in long-term commitment, continuous education and supportive environment.
These reflections, though based on Indian experiences, have validity in the East African context. This will be easily confirmed by reading the Men to men strategy toolkit on working with men and boys to combat gender based violence, published by the African Women’s Development and Communication Network and Heinrich Boll Foundation. Luckily, this resource is available online.
The writer is a lecturer in Gender and Development Studies at South Eastern Kenya Universality ([email protected]).