The 1994 International Conference on Population and Development acknowledged that women’s lack of empowerment had an adverse impact on health outcomes. Men usually are the decision-makers, and they take decisions ranging from personal decisions regarding the size of families to the policy and programme decisions taken at all levels of government.
The Beijing Platform for Action on Women (1995), and more recently the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), has put the focus on engaging men in programmes to advance gender equality and women’s health.
However, these masculine norms, that legitimise both men’s domination over women and the power of some men over other men harm the activism of gender equality and women’s and men’s health outcomes. To address these harmful gender norms and power structures, “gender transformative” interventions are being implemented.
The major aspects of gender-transformative interventions with men include analysing the role of power relations in negatively shaping health, identifying practices and attitudes among men that harm both women’s and men’s health, and recognising men as active agents of change in advancing gender equality.
If a gender transformative approach does not occur, then male engagement interventions may risk undermining women’s autonomy, and this may lead to reinforcement of existing gender inequalities. Programmes about women should include components to foster shared decision making between men and women; otherwise, they may reinforce past cultural norms that women need to seek permission from men before accessing care.
As we mark 25 years of the Beijing Platform with a vision of “Generation Equality: Realizing Women’s Rights for an Equal Future,” we must decide on next steps for gender-transformative programming with men.
First, men should be involved in a gender transformative way because it is important to complement women’s health and empowerment interventions. For instance, if we want to improve women’s property rights and control over resources, then men too should be involved in this process. Such interventions need a supportive policy and institutional environment for gender equality.
We should make sure that if we engage males to improve women’s health, then it should not be unintentionally harmful to women’s rights, safety, autonomy, and wellbeing. It is equally important to discuss how to engage males in a gender transformative way rather than just focusing on the content of gender transformative programming. We should engage men so that we do not alienate or ignore their needs, especially to subjugate potential male resistance to gender equality.
The Covid-19 pandemic has brought open the gendered inequalities into sharper focus. We are seeing that the global frontline health and social care workforce are predominantly female; whereas males occupy the majority of leadership positions.
This shows us how the work environment exposes women to a higher risk of infection as well as draw attention to their psychosocial needs. Women are facing a double whammy because of the burden of long hours at work and additional care work at home.
Research shows that health institutions are structured in ways that reproduce harmful gender norms and stymie both women’s and men’s access to and experience of quality cares. To improve the health and wellbeing of women and girls and men and boys, we should actively engage in health interventions that seek to counter unequal gender power structures and harmful gender norms.
