Feminism and men : Nikki van der Gaag

247 Pages·2014·1.71 MB·English

by  van der Gaag

About the author Nikki van der Gaag is an
independent writer and consultant based in the UK.
She has been involved in feminism and development
for more than 20 years and has held senior editorial
and communications posts in the non-profit sector,
including at Oxfam, the New Internationalist and the
Panos Institute. She specializes in writing about
gender, in particular girls’ issues, and men and
gender equality. She is the principal author of six of
the eight State of the World’s Girls reports and has
written nine other books, including The No-nonsense
Guide to Women’s Rights.
FEMINISM AND MEN
Nikki van der Gaag
Feminism and Men was first published in 2014 by Zed Books Ltd, 7 Cynthia Street, London N1 9JF, UK
This ebook edition was first published in 2014
www.zedbooks.co.uk
Copyright © Nikki van der Gaag 2014
The right of Nikki van der Gaag to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988
Set in Monotype Plantin and FFKievit by Ewan Smith, London
Index: [email protected]
Cover design: www.kikamiller.com
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the
prior permission of Zed Books Ltd.
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data available
ISBN 978-1-78032-914-7
CONTENTS
Figures
Acknowledgements
1
INTRODUCTION
2
BEYOND THE BINARIES: FEMINISM AND MEN
3
SHIFTING CULTURAL AND SOCIAL ATTITUDES
4
NO ZERO-SUM GAME: EDUCATION AND HEALTH
5
GIVING UP POWER? WOMEN, MEN AND WORK
6
THE FATHERHOOD REVOLUTION?
7
PROVING THEIR MANHOOD: MEN AND VIOLENCE
8
CONCLUSION: BECOMING CONNECTED
Notes
Selected reading
Index
FIGURES
1 Can a man be a feminist?
2 Learning achievement and progress, by gender,
Vietnam
3 A university education is more important for a boy
than for a girl
4 Suicides, women and men, per 100,000 people,
2001–10
5 Percentage of young people aged fifteen to nineteen
who had higher-risk sex with a non-marital, non-
cohabitating partner in the last year, selected
countries
6 Percentage of women in senior management around
the world
7 When jobs are scarce, men should have more right to
a job
8 Men’s and women’s reports of men’s participation in
domestic duties
9 Links between fathers’ and sons’ participation in
domestic duties
10 Men’s reports of work-related stress
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This book has been a long time in the making, and is the product of many
discussions with many men and women and girls and boys on different
continents – thanks to all of you.
In particular I would like to thank Ruth Pearson for her support throughout,
Gary Barker and Michael Kaufman for commenting on the draft and
contributing to so many of the ideas behind it, Tina Wallace for discussions over
many years on gender equality, and Sharon Goulds for working with me on the
ideas for Plan’s Because I Am a Girl report on boys and gender equality.
Thanks too to Kat Banyard for discussions on young women and feminism,
and to Sandy Ruxton, Kirrily Pells, Emma Wilson and Caroline Knowles; to
Rachel Ploem for sharing ideas on balancing feminism and work on
masculinities and to Marisa Viana da Silva, Oswaldo Montoya Telleria and Marc
Peters, and all those among the ‘unlikely encounter of unusual suspects’ at the
‘Undressing Patriarchy’ conference organized by the Institute of Development
Studies. And of course to the many hundreds of people who answered my online
survey for this book – your time and effort were much appreciated.
Thanks to Sarah Lewis for her meticulous research, and to the editors at Zed
Books, including Tamsine O’Riordan and Jakob Horstmann, who were so
enthusiastic about the idea, and to Kim Walker for the process of putting the
whole thing together with Ewan Smith, copyeditor Ian Paten and proofreader
Chris Parker. To my mother, Mary, for her support, and my late father, Gerth,
who would not necessarily have agreed with all the ideas but would have been
proud of me for writing this book. And finally to Margaret Mowles, and to my
partner Chris for his love, patience and careful comments, and my grown-up
children Rosa and George, for listening to my rants for so many years.
1 | INTRODUCTION
Time to change: men and feminism
‘Women are strong, bold, and brave, but men and boys also have a big role
to play in ending gender inequality. … It’s time to influence change in
society.’ (Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, United Nations under-secretary-
general, March 2014)1
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka’s open letter to men asking them to support women’s
struggle for gender equality comes at just the right time.
For the last few decades, there have been fundamental changes to the way that
many women all over the world live their lives. They have moved into paid work
in unprecedented numbers. They have challenged sexism and discrimination and
gender inequality and violence. In many countries, girls are not only going to
school but doing as well as or better than boys and young men. A raft of new
laws have been enacted at international and national level to protect women’s
rights.
At the same time, social and economic inequalities have been growing, and
together with increasing religious and cultural conservatism threaten to
undermine many of the gains women have made. A recent United Nations
report2 notes that the progress made in the past twenty years towards reducing
global poverty is at risk of being reversed because of a failure to combat
widening inequality and strengthen women’s rights.
But some things have not changed. Men still hold the majority of positions of
power. Men’s violence against women, which cuts across race, class and
geography, shows no sign of decreasing. And women and girls in many
countries continue to be seen as second-class citizens, especially if they are poor,
or come from a black or minority ethnic group.
However, one of the consequences of the changes in women’s lives is that the
traditional model of being a man – the strong leader and main provider of the
household – is slowly beginning to be questioned, not just by the ‘bold and
brave’ women invoked by Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, but by some men as well.
Men like Anthony, or Pascal, both of whom we meet later in this book. Anthony
had to learn how to move beyond the belief that his wife Janine should do as she
was told. And Pascal found that he was becoming a violent man just like his
father and didn’t know what to do about it.
This growing group of men in many parts of the world don’t want to react as
they see some other men do, with violence bred of frustration. They experience
power over women, but they find that does not necessarily make them happy.
And while, in many countries, girls and women, despite many setbacks,
continue to have an increasing number of choices about who they can be and
how they can express themselves, men and boys generally have more restrictive
models of what it means to be a man. This is partly because, as Todd Minerson,
from the White Ribbon campaign3 of men opposed to violence against women,
notes: ‘When you’re from the dominant group you don’t have that history of
struggle and analysis that comes from the non-dominant group’s perspective. It’s
not natural, or it’s not something taught. It’s not something that’s shared with us
by our fathers.’4
As we will see later in this book, there are alternatives. Men too can change.
When shown other ways of thinking and behaving, Anthony and Pascal were
able to find a way of being that freed them up to be who they wanted to be – and
which benefited the women in their lives as well.
There is also growing interest in the ways in which men can support gender
equality, for example the recent campaign ‘He for She’ by UN Women, which
asks men to come forward to say that they support women’s rights.5
But these changes are not straightforward. There are major differences
between men like these who support feminism and gender equality, and those
who have reacted by becoming part of a ‘men’s rights’ movement. These men
feel that their own needs and voices are being ignored in the debates around
gender equality – and that feminism is to blame. And they want to make those
voices heard, and they are generally raging against women.
There is a resurgence of feminism in many parts of the world. But there are
tensions among feminists, who feel that the movement of men for gender
equality is taking away precious space and scarce resources from women’s rights
activism.