Men have role in promoting gender equality
Study looks at how they can promote equity and prevent violence
CALGARY— When Jeff St. John became a single dad, sharing custody of his daughter after a divorce, his life changed in ways he didn’t expect.
“I was really coming face to face, personally, with all the issues around gender norms — what I was expected to be or do as a single father,” he said.
As a therapist and consultant, he was planning to focus his PhD on leadership and social innovation, but his experience led him into a deep dive into the gendered expectations of fatherhood and masculinity.
“Being a dad to a little girl, the more I was aware of the issues, the more I wanted to be doing something positive about it.”
St. John’s work now includes helping organizations like the Calgary Women’s Emergency Shelter engage with men. While the shelter primarily offers safety and support for women and children fleeing family violence, it also has a long-standing counselling program for men who want to change their own abusive behaviour.
Men like St. John are a key part of meaningful progress toward gender equality, according to new Calgary-based research — but researcher Lana Wells says these men need better access to resources and funding.
Wells and Sarah Fotheringham, both from the University of Calgary’s faculty of social work, interviewed 33 men about their experiences as what the researchers call “pro-feminist” advocates. Many of them said their work sometimes left them feeling isolated and burnt out with a lack of resources — but they added that young men and boys need more opportunities to talk about how gender stereotypes impact them.
Wells said the study, painting a national picture of men’s experiences promoting gender equality, is the first of its kind in Canada.
While breaking down gender discrimination and inequality is often viewed as a “women’s issue,” Wells said it shouldn’t solely fall to women to speak out about the harms of issues like sexual violence and domestic abuse. “We need more men advocating for equity and equality for all genders. And we need men to stop other men’s violence,” she said.
But it’s also complicated for men to get involved in solutions for a problem perpetuated within their own ranks. Many of the men included in the study also said they wanted to make sure that their work didn’t take resources away from organizations and initiatives doing work to support women. And there’s a good reason that women are at the centre of the work to address gender inequality, Wells said, since women have decades of experience speaking up and doing the work to address gender-based violence.
But for Wells, another important step is talking about how enforcing a narrow set of gender roles hurts men, too. According to the Public Health Agency of Canada, for example, men account for upwards of 70 per cent of suicides across every age range except children from the ages of 10 to 14.
St. John says he works from the idea that “if you don’t transform your pain, you’re going to transmit it.” And if men are forced to conform to ideas about “what a man should be,” they might end up trying to dull their pain in potentially unhealthy ways, or looking to get control of their life by controlling others.
“More than 80 per cent of the perpetration of violence against women is men. So something different has to happen to change the level of perpetration,” St. John said.
“My theory is that the healthier men are, the less they will choose to use violence to control women.”
Wells, who also leads the Shift Project to End Domestic Violence, is currently working with social enterprise group Next Gen Men to build a national network for men doing gender equality work.
It’s still an emerging field in Canada, but Wells said making that kind of investment holds unlimited potential for progress.
“I’m hoping that we are going to significantly reduce violence against all genders ... I’m hoping for healthier relationships, healthier families and healthier communities. I don’t think we all understand how deeply socialized we are,” she said. “For me, the dream is a more equitable society where we’ve eradicated violence.”