Working with men and boys for gender equality

Members of Bangladesh's national social movement Nijera Kori. Image from Nijera Kori as part of the EMERGE project.

There remains much work to do on delivering transformative change towards gender equality - women and girls still have fewer opportunities, rights and freedoms than men and boys. But gender equality will not be achieved without the involvement of men and boys. Engaging men and boys in work for gender equality is important for three reasons:

• It helps to achieve positive impacts for women and girls.

• It addresses the gendered nature of the structural drivers of many social and development problems.

• It highlights the fact that harmful masculinities are bad for men and boys, as well as women and girls.

In recent years substantial progress has been made in engaging men and boys in work for gender equality. However challenges remain and questions are still asked about the best way to do this work. On this page you will find a range of resources designed to help answer these questions.

Find out more:

EMERGE

Engendering Men: Evidence on Routes to Gender Equality’ (EMERGE) is a two-year project to build an openly accessible basis of evidence, lessons and guidance for working with boys and men to promote gender equality. The project is producing a range of useful outputs, which can be found on IDS' Men, Boys and Gender Equality website.

http://menandboys.ids.ac.uk/emerge

Promundo

Founded in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil in 1997, Promundo works to promote caring, non-violent and equitable masculinities and gender relations internationally.

http://promundoglobal.org/

Sonke Gender Justice

Established in 2006, Sonke Gender Justice is a South-African NGO that strives to prevent domestic and sexual violence, reduce the spread and impact of HIV and AIDS and promote gender equality and human rights.

http://www.genderjustice.org.za/

MenEngage Alliance

MenEngage is a global alliance that provides a collective voice on the need to engage men and boys in gender equality, to build and improve the field of practice around engaging men in achieving gender justice, and advocating before policymakers at the local, national, regional and international levels.

http://menengage.org/

Engendering Men: A Collaborative Review of Evidence on Men and Boys in Social Change and Gender Equality

This review critically assesses trends and shifts in related social norms and structures over the past 20 years, successful policies and programmes and implications for best practice, and future directions for promoting men’s and boys’ support for gender equality across a variety of priority thematic areas.

EMERGE Practice Brief: Lessons in good practice from work with men and boys for gender equality

This practice brief pulls together lessons from good practice on working with men and boys for gender equality in a range of different settings. The lessons are taken from the EMERGE case studies series.