The call to engage men and boys as allies in building gender equality has become an increasingly popular theme, from the UN Women HeforShe campaign, to finding a central place in the recently-concluded Commission on the Status of Women (CSW) in New York (March 14 – 24). It makes sense; men are half the population so it is only logical to engage with them in the fight for gender equality and against gender based violence (GBV). However, enthusiasm for recruiting men to the women’s rights struggle masks considerable confusion about precisely how to engage them as allies and on whose terms are they really being engaged.
The UN CSW emphatically asserted the need to “fully engage men and boys as agents and beneficiaries of change in the achievement of gender equality and the empowerment of women and girls and as allies in the elimination of all forms of discrimination and violence against women and girls.” But there are few convincing examples of how this can be done effectively.
At the CSW side events, the language about engaging men and boys as allies in ending violence against women and girls (VAWG) and GBV teetered between invoking men as equal, engaged partners and a more archaic, patriarchal conceptualization of male gendered responsibilities as protectors.
