Make men partners in the fight for gender equality
Are we are ignoring one half of the problem, and therefore underestimating one half of the potential solution?
Every day, we hear of atrocities against girls and women in India. This is despite the fact that as a country, we can boast of having some of the most progressive policies and civic movements. I wonder whether, in our work to empower young girls and women, we are ignoring one half of the problem, and therefore underestimating one half of the potential solution.
We often talk of men as people who need to alter themselves so that women can be better off. However, we rarely offer concrete, innovative strategies for young men to face issues of patriarchy and masculinity head on and become their best selves. As a country looking to better engage our young boys and men, we can start with four solutions.
First, we need to create safe platforms for young men to share their fears, their doubts, and their insecurities about sexuality, patriarchy, masculinity, and the burden of expectations they bear. We need structured activities that get young men together to unlearn gender norms and learn equitable behaviour. It does not matter what the activity is – be it sports, music, theatre or even bird watching – so long as it allows young men to be free from narrow, negative, and gendered identities.
Second, we must redefine our legal framework to step up to the challenge of a truly equitable society. Often, our policies reflect patriarchal biases that can trap men in stereotypes – the idea of guarding the modesty of a woman serves neither men nor women nor any other gender – instead, it comes from the same strong patriarchal framework that we need to confront and reject.
The government and private sector are already running skilling programmes across the country. Integrating a gender lens into these initiatives to make them address questions of gender-based power structures in the work place, and sensitise both men and women to them, would be both cost-effective and societally useful.
And fourth, we must tap into organisations that work with girls. Civil society organisations that work with girls and women could be engaged with to share learnings, provide support and even aid in designing programmes for men and boys. For this to happen, philanthropy must come forward to actively support such organisations and innovation.
And so, while we have rightly worked on women’s empowerment, perhaps we have missed an opportunity to include a key group whose fates are intertwined with women.
We need to support the few organisations working in this space. The young men of India need us to do more for them. And we need to do it for men in their own right, and we need to do it even more urgently if we really want women to be empowered too.