The growing calls to engage men and boys to advance gender equality have been met with resistance and labels of it being a donor- driven agenda from many feminists and women's rights activists.
Gender dynamics and the gender order continue to change in Zimbabwe and beyond. While tremendous variations do exists, the objective quality of life and political conditions for women and girls have improved markedly around the world in the past 25 years. Women are now 49 percent of the global workforce and represent half of those enrolled in universities.
Women's income has increased substantially compared to men, although it is still on average 22 percent less than men's. Nearly 140 countries have explicit guarantees of gender equality in their constitutions, however slow they may be to act on those (United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, 2010).
Equally important is what is happening in the social imagination; there is now a generation of boys and girls in Zimbabwe and around the globe who have gone to school together, who may (in most settings but not clearly all) see each other as equals and who have increasingly seen their mothers carry out activities -- in particular, working outside in the home and contributing to household income -- that used to be considered the purview of men.
We cannot declare that the gender equality agenda is done. The gaps within the country and between the rich and the poor continue to rise.
Maternal mortality rate still remains high in Zimbabwe and the chances of women dying in childbirth are still very high. We still have very high rates of violence against women.
The continuing high rates of violence against women by male partners are a shame to men and boys. From global surveys with women, inspired by the World Health Organisation multi-country study on violence against women, and others that have followed the same methodology; we know that about a third of the world's women will suffer physical violence from a male partner at least once in their lives with rates from 15 percent to 71 percent.
It is a shame of a different order that men have not assumed a greater role in care work, that the care of children and in the home is still considered in our society, in our politics and in our workplaces to be the work of women and girls, whether paid or unpaid. What do we make of men and masculinities in all this? If we have a national agenda that seek to revolutionise the lives to women and girls, the lives of men and boys have to change as well. These changing realities have to then frame any engagements of men and boys in the gender agenda and this then should also challenge programmes and policies driving the gender equality agenda.
The engagement of men on the gender agenda has been at most project based and short term. It is politically and symbolically important and it is having an impact on the relatively small number of women, men and children it affects, but it is limited in reach and often far shy of what is needed to achieve large scale social change.
A casual assessment of the projects and programmes in Zimbabwe that have engaged men and boys to advance gender equality will easily show this trend.
The World Health Organisation has noted that interventions that question social norms related to masculinities were, in general, more effective than health interventions that did not include a discussion or component to question these norms.
Interventions with men to achieve attitudes and practices can be described as strange interventions trying to achieve measurable impact in the shortest amount of time with the least amount of resources. There is an overall belief that centuries of patriarchy can be overcome with something equivalent to a vaccine or a five minute counselling session.
The need to work with men and boys to advance gender equality needs well-designed, participatory, and emancipatory programme interventions that can make a difference and lead to change in the lives of individual men and women.
Little has been done in the areas of education and health or the overcrowded prisons filled with low-income men with limited educational attainment, or income support systems and social justice polices.
We have been slow to understand and timid in affirming that there is only one pathway to sustainable, structural gender equality; supporting the full rights of women and men and supporting the roles of both men and women as equal caregivers and providers.
One of the biggest points of discussion in the gender equality agenda is what to do about disadvantaged men or low-income men. We have long taken seriously women's economic disadvantages. We have understood that women's lower income relative to men is in itself a tremendous inequality but is also the driver of many other social inequalities that women live every day.
The simplest and most direct way to think about disadvantaged men is this: if a poor women makes U$1,00 a day (the very crude global indicator of poverty), this poor women's husband on average makes US$1,22 a day. He may have other kinds of power and privilege compared to his wife. His male peers may laugh it off and support him if he spends most of his weekly pay at the bar, takes an outside sexual partner and comes home and uses violence against his wife.
But he is not a rich man; he is not even middle class. And when he compares himself to other men around him, which is what patriarchy makes him do; he is not and does not feel like an empowered human being. And very often he questions whether he is, as commonly socially defined, even a man.
Livelihood policies that understand how economics affect men, women and families and how work and livelihoods are important to men beyond the material benefits of income.
We hear from men a syllogism; to be socially recognised as a man, you have to work. No work means no manhood. Men's employment status plays a role in determining when they can form families, whether they are able to contribute financially to their families and in some cases, whether they live with their children.
If men derive their identities and chief social function from their roles as providers, what happens when men are without work, or do not have sufficient income to meet the social expectations placed on them as providers?
Specifically what happens under such conditions in terms of men's participation in family life, involvement with children and family formation? This is not to suggest here that men's poverty is somehow worse that women's. This is to affirm the fact that poverty plays out in gendered ways in the lives of women and men and interventions aimed at poverty alleviation should also know what to do with poor men if gendered social justice is to be achieved.
Like women's poverty, and men's poverty, both issues deserve attention. Both are gender issues and both have immediate implications in the lives of women and men in different and unequal way. They must be compared yes, and they should both be acknowledged as gendered realities.
Lastly, misguided beliefs about men should be changed. How do we get to more justice-based, nuanced gender equality policies that acknowledge men in thoughtful ways?
How do we speed up and complete the full gender equality agenda while also including and understanding men?
Too often, averages and aggregates lead us to blunt-headed policies, to conclusions that all men are violent or prone to violence or that men do not carry out the care work so why should we even try.
We cannot ignore aggregate inequalities but we do have more insights on how to promote change when we focus on and listen to the voices of men who have found non-violent, gender equitable, caring versions of manhood.
We must understand that patriarchy is a power structure that works in multiple directions at the same time. A few men have power over the lives of other men and over women. These powerful men decide when a factory closes or moves to another region or decide if they will pay adequate benefits or a decent wage or not.
The patriarchal dividend is not evenly divided, just as dividends in our capitalist system are not evenly divided. We cannot push men further along the path toward gender equality and reduce their use of violence against women unless we acknowledge this reality. Whether in Mkokoba, Sizinda, Mangondoza or in middle class households across the country, we must acknowledge that some men who have made women's lives hell have themselves had hellish lives.
If we want men to become non-violent, to become more caring, more empathetic, to treat women with the respect they deserve, we must show some empathy towards them. This is not to forgive any individual man's violence. This is not to forgive individual men for the multiple injustices committed in women's and girls' lives. And in saying that we must treat men with empathy, we do not diminish in any way the power and urgency of the women's rights movement.
In fact, we strengthen the women's rights agenda when we help men develop the connection that makes us all human. Only then will we complete the revolution we have started in the lives of women and girls.
In the midst of the urgency and the confusion surrounding engaging men and boys, gender transformative initiatives with men are often designed
to enable men to explore rigid societal messages about manhood and examine the costs that these norms have on men and women and their communities.
These efforts often engage men in the social action in order to challenge the existing gender norms that perpetuate violence and poor health in communities in which they live. Men's social action goals should be focused on building alliances with women to promote justice and equality.
The Zimbabwe Women's Resource Centre and Network is an information-based organisation advocating for gender equality and equity.
source: All Africa
