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Women in the City
By Maj Britt Theorin, Chairwoman of the European Parliament's Committee on Women's Rights and Equal Opportunities
The area around the newly constructed European Parliament in Brussels is completely depopulated at night, full of abandoned buildings, poorly lit streets and dark parks.  It is a monument of bad metropolitan gender planning. Urban planning has failed miserably when 50 per cent of the European Parliament's staff feel insecure upon leaving their workplace at night.
Unfortunately the area around the European Parliament is no exception. Gender considerations are often left out of discussions on urban planning and policy making. Other problems such as air pollution, traffic congestion and affordable housing are usually given priority. I've been invited to discuss this gap in urban policy making at an upcoming conference of European Socialists concerning metropolitan areas. I plan to focus on four areas of urban life that are very different for women than men: crime and sexual harassment, reconciling work and family life, red light districts, and the specific concerns of immigrant women.
Violence and Harassment
Tim Beneke, an author on rape and masculinity, states that:
"For some women, the threat of rape at night turns their cars into armored tanks, their solitude into isolation." I've found that many men have a hard time understanding this reality, so I plan to ask the conference participants to:
Close their eyes and imagine a time when they were really afraid. When their hearts started to beat faster. When they got cold, but their hands were sweaty. Then I will ask them to imagine that they feel this way each time they are outside on their own after dark.
Hopefully this exercise will help them understand what the threat of assault and rape do to women. But the fear of rape and sexual assault is not an inevitable part of metropolitan life. With gender sensitive urban planning and policy making, we can substantively reduce women's fear. Adequate lighting in our parks and streets and surveillance cameras in isolated areas make metropolitan areas considerably less menacing after dark.
Besides rethinking the physical layout of our cities, we need gender sensitive urban policymaking. This ranges from more patrolling police officers after dark to secure and affordable public transport and subsidized cab-prices for women and girls travelling alone at night. In Stockholm - where cab prices are soaring - many cab companies offer what they call 'girl cabs.' After dark, women and girls can pay a shared fare if they agree to pick up other female passengers heading in the same direction. Similarly, to avoid the all too widespread sexual grouping, rubbing, and harassment that occurs in public transportation, we need separate metro-cars for women at peek hours. This has already been implemented with considerable success in Mexico City and Tokyo. Similar initiatives might be needed in Europe.
Balancing Work and Home
A problem that is magnified in urban settings is the lack of facilities for child and elder care. In many European countries more than 50 per cent of women with young children work outside of the home. Reconciling work and family life becomes arduous when childcare facilities are few in numbers and located far away from the home or work place. Although this arguably is a problem also for working fathers, in practice the responsibility rests with women.
As Bengt Westerberg, the former leader of the Swedish liberal party states that:
"It is uncommon to find women who 'have been fortunate enough' to be married to a man who stays at home to take care of household and family duties. Women are considered 'fortunate' if they have been able to find a spouse who is prepared to share this responsibility with them."
Urban policy makers have a responsibility to make these services available and affordable to all working mothers and fathers - because all parents have the right to have child-care facilities in the communities in which they live.
Prostitution & Red Light Districts
Although problems such as drugs and prostitution also exist in rural areas, they are magnified in urban settings. Particularly striking is the phenomenon of concentrated areas of prostitution in so called 'red light districts'. Although opinions differ on whether prostitution should be illegal, most agree that the drugs, human trafficking and crime that prostitution brings with it need to be addressed. In fact, the most direct means of combating these problems is through targeting the demand side of prostitution.
This policy was recently implemented in Sweden where a law has been adopted that incriminates the customers, rather than the prostitutes. As a direct result, street prostitution has decreased by 50 per cent and the Swedish police maintain that the majority of these women have not moved into hidden forms of prostitution. Indeed, as a policewoman asserts "for many women who wanted to quit, this law provided the incentive they needed." It is also reported that many drug addicted prostitutes chose to commit themselves to treatment centers last year as it became too hard to make a living off prostitution. Crimes associated with prostitution have, of course, also decreased.
In countries adopting the opposite approach, that is legalizing prostitution, there has been a growth in trafficking and other related crimes, for example, in the Netherlands, Germany, and Greece, among others. I think European countries should follow the Swedish model and focus criminal penalties on the male customers of prostitutes instead of legalizing prostitution. To legalize prostitution is to give up a vital part of the fight for women's human rights.
The Needs of Immigrant Women
One final area of concern that I plan to discuss is the gender specific needs of immigrant women. Of course ethnic minorities also live in rural areas, but they are found in large communities and numbers in urban areas. As a result, the challenge of meeting their assimilation needs is more complicated for urban policy makers than their rural counterparts. A recent Swedish study, for example, indicates that immigrant girls face particular assimilation difficulties, due to a cultural conflict between the values and gender roles promoted in the home and in school. It is therefore not surprising that immigrant girls are over-represented among those who do not attend senior high school, and that the dropout rate for female senior high school students is almost three times higher than that of native Swedes. Urban policy makers must begin to promote training in the specific needs of immigrant girls for teachers and social workers.
In short, urban planners and policy makers face a wide spectrum of gender specific challenges, from sexual assaults, harassment and prostitution to shortages of child and elder-care facilities. It is no longer acceptable that decision-makers hide behind some hierarchy of 'primary' urban concerns, like housing and employment. Urban planning and policy making must consider the needs of all citizens - women and men, boys and girls. It is time to end the fear. It is time to make the night safe. It is time to make our cities safe.
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A Review of Gender Policy in 2000
By Earl Hadley, Editor, Gender Policy Review
While women continue to suffer from discrimination in most areas of life and face human rights abuses in many domains, the past year brought with it a number of positive international policy developments. These include the coming to force of the CEDAW Optional Protocol, The Beijing +5 Review, a UN Resolution on Women and Conflict Resolution, The World March of Women, a meeting of Female Heads of State, and progress in the creation of an International Criminal Court.
CEDAW OPTIONAL PROTOCAL
On October 6, 1999, the General Assembly of the United Nations added an Optional Protocol, designed by the UN Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women, to the Convention on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. The Protocol was to enter into force once ten states, which had ratified the Convention itself, subsequently ratified the Protocol. This fall, Italy became the tenth state to do so, thereby allowing the Optional Protocol to enter into force on December 22, 2000.
This Protocol is an important addition to the international tools aimed at protecting the rights of women, because it allows individual women, or groups of women, to directly submit allegations of human rights violations to the Committee on the Elimination of Discrimination against Women. It also provides the Committee with the ability to initiate inquiries into situations of grave or systematic violations of women's rights across the world.
Despite being a strong step forward there is one glaring weakness to the Protocol. It provides ratifying States, with the ability to reject the request of the Committee, to investigate violations of women's rights in their territory.
[To date, the Optional Protocol has been ratified by 13 States, and there are a total of 62 signatories. The ratifying nations are: Austria, Bangladesh, Bolivia, Denmark, France, Ireland, Italy, Mali, Namibia, New Zealand, Senegal, Slovakia and Thailand.]
BEJING +5 REVIEW
The 1995 Fourth World Conference of Women, held in Beijing, drew almost 47,000 women and men and to date remains the largest gathering of government and NGO representatives at a United Nations Conference. At this historic event, 189 countries unanimously adopted the Beijing Declaration and the Platform for Action.
The year 2000 marked the fifth anniversary of this conference as well as a United Nations review of the progress that had been made in fulfilling the goals outlined five years earlier. More than one thousand organizations registered for this special session, which was held this past June, representing all regions of the world.
It was hoped, by many, that the review session would have provided a platform for delegations to analyze the progress made in improving the status of women, to identify obstacles, and develop strategies for removing these obstacles. Sadly, these high aspirations rapidly deteriorated into a struggle to prevent the achievements, made five years ago, from being erased. A small group of governments, including Syria, Algeria, Poland, Pakistan, and Nicaragua attempted to use the review session as a venue for undermining a woman's right to self-determination and equality.
Many governments asserted, or didn't oppose the belief, that husbands have the right to control and discipline their spouses and daughters based upon cultural norms. This was a barely disguised attempt to legitimize, or ignore, 'honor' killings and genital mutilation. Similarly, laws that recognize men as the legal heads of households, and remove the right of women to freely decide whether and whom to marry or whether to work in the formal economy were suggested to be natural extensions of diverse legal and social systems. When forced to go on the defensive, these conservative delegations hid behind notions of cultural relativism and suggested, for example, that the right to sexual and reproductive decision-making was part of an ideological invasion from northern radicals, that need not be addressed.
While small in number, these conservative activists were very well organized and nearly succeeded in removing crucial language, concerning women's freedoms and rights, from the Platform for Action. It was only in the final hours of the conference that a deal was hammered out, which prevented any backtracking. In the meanwhile, the goals of concrete benchmarks and clear financial contributions - undesirable among rich northern countries - were forced out of the discussion, which perhaps explains their silence during this debate.
Governments finally adopted an outcome document that reaffirmed the Platform for Action, but failed to outline a program for moving from rhetoric to implementation. Indeed in October, the General Assembly adopted a resolution entitled, "Follow-up to the Fourth World Conference on Women and full implementation of the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action and the outcome of the twenty-third special session of the General Assembly." We'll have to wait and see how many additional review sessions occur before the words full implementation sound anything other than hollow.
Despite this rather pessimistic assessment, the defeat of the conservative forces made the Beijing +5 Review a victory.
UN Resolution on Women and War
On October 31, the United Nations Security Council unanimously adopted its first resolution on women and peace and security. The resolution:
- Calls upon all parties to armed conflict to fully respect international law applicable to the rights and protection of women and girls, especially as civilians.
- Calls on all parties to armed conflict to take special measures to protect women and girls from gender-based violence, particularly rape and other forms of sexual abuse.
- Emphasizes the responsibilities of all states to put an end to impunity and to prosecute those responsible for genocide crimes, including those related to sexual and other forms of violence against women and girls.
Of course the fulfillment of principles, or the achievement of tasks suggested by any resolution, are dependent upon the financial contributions and political will of the Member States of the United Nations. This is particularly the case when dealing with conflict resolution, as Member States provide troops, delegates, and funding for all operations, and determine the gender balance of all personnel. The effect of the resolution is therefore largely dependent upon whether Member States provide the UN with the resources necessary to fulfill the tasks set out in the resolution.
Some of the goals, which fall in this category, include when the resolution:
- Urges the Secretary General to expand the role and contributions of women in UN field-based operations, including among military observers, civilian police, human rights and humanitarian personnel;
- Encourages the Secretary General to implement his strategic plan of action (A/49/587) calling for an increase in the participation of women at decision-making levels in conflict resolution and peace processes;
- Urges Member States to increase their voluntary financial, technical and logistical support for gender sensitive training efforts.
The following are a number of measures the Secretary General can take on his own accord, and can therefore be held accountable if they are not enacted.
The Resolution:
- Calls for a United Nation's study on the impact of armed conflict on women and girls, the role of women in peace-building, and the gender dimensions of peace processes and conflict resolution.
- Requests the Secretary General to provide Member States with training guidelines and materials on the protection, rights and particular needs of women;
- Urges the Secretary General to appoint more women as special representatives and envoys.
International Criminal Court
In the past year, accounts of sexual violence against women were reported from Chechnya, Sierra Leone, East and West Timor, and other parts of the world. At some point the international community will hopefully respond to these reports, but the current action of forming ad-hoc international criminal tribunals, as in Yugoslavia and Rwanda, is clearly inadequate. In both regions, the investigators for criminal tribunals appear to have failed to collect sufficient evidence to convict individuals for the widespread use of rape that occurred in these areas. Concurrently, women expressed doubt in the criminal tribunal's ability to provide anonymity and protection if they choose to testify. Convincing victims and witnesses to come forward, and subsequently being able to achieve convictions, is in large part based on the credibility of the criminal tribunals. Given their ad-hoc and temporary nature, it is easy to see why these tribunals have limited credibility. The credibility of an international judiciary can only be enhanced through the creation of a permanent criminal court backed by the world community.
December 31st brought the possibility of an International Criminal Court (ICC) one step closer to reality. On the final day of 2000 the United States, along with fifteen other nations, signed the Rome Statute, which establishes a permanent International Criminal Court. While only half way to receiving the required ratifications to come into force, the support of the United States is a strong boost to the ICC (27 out of the needed 60 states have ratified to date). Indeed, while it is doubtful that the US Congress will ratify the Rome Statute, the support of the US Presidency provides a needed measure of legitimacy to the ICC.
Other nations signing since November 1st include: Peru, Bahrain, Nauru, Oman, Egypt, Philippines, Seychelles, Guyana, Yemen, Algeria, Mozambique, Sao Tome and Principe, Cape Verde, Mongolia, Bahamas, Uzbekistan, Tanzania, Iran, Israel, Marshall Islands, Germany, Austria and Finland.
WORLD MARCH OF WOMEN
The World March of Women was a global initiative involving approximately 5,000 non-governmental organizations from 159 nations from across the globe.
Through their signed petitions and marches, which took place in major cities across the planet in early October, the participants focused the world on poverty elimination, ending violence against women, and guaranteeing equality between women and men.
The marchers demanded genuine protection of the rights of all women, regardless of their ethnicity, sexual orientation or religious/cultural affiliation from the UN and its Member States. They also asserted their fundamental differences with the economic policies implemented by the World Bank and IMF such as structural adjustment programs, the need to integrate a gender-based perspective and to introduce significant debt relief.
On October 15, in Washington D.C., 20,000 women and men from the United States and internationally participated in the World March of Women. In New York, about 10,000 women and men joined the March, and in Belgium over five thousand marched through the streets the European Parliament and European Commission call home. By October 20, 2000, the total number of signatures collected in support of the World March of Women's demands stood at 4,736,000.
MEETING OF WOMEN HEADS OF STATE
This fall, the United Nations hosted a conference for some of the most powerful women in the world. Current and former leaders at the meeting included: Prime Minister Helen Clark of New Zealand; President Tarja Halonen of Finland; President Vaira Vike-Freiberga of Latvia; and former Prime Minister of Canada Kim Campbell. Female directors of United Nations agencies were also in attendance, including the heads of:
- United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF)
- World Food Programme (WFP)
- United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA)
- United Nations Development Fund for Women (UNIFEM)
- The United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, as well as
- The Assistant Secretary-General and Special Adviser on Gender Issues and Advancement of Women
- The Assistant Secretary-General for External Relations and
- The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees.
Among the recommendations generated from their discussion, are those that call on the United Nations and Governments to:
- Support the advancement of women in government, and employ specific methods and target times to ensure more equal representation of women and men at each level of government.
- Encourage international cooperation in combating all forms of violence and abuse, including trafficking in women; put into force the Statute of the International Criminal Court, which recognizes rape as a war crime; and recognize and take measures to prevent racist acts against women.
- Adopt policies to protect and promote the full spectrum of the human rights of indigenous women.
- Improve women's representation at all levels within the United Nations system, especially at senior levels; fulfil the 50/50 quota of men and women among its staff; and appoint female permanent representatives to United Nations missions and in delegations.
If you know of significant events in your region, let us know so we can develop a complete compilation of gender policy events in 2000.
[Editor's note: Women currently head the State or government in: Bangladesh, Finland, Ireland, Latvia, New Zealand, Panama, Saint Lucia, San Marino and Sri Lanka.]
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Bringing Men into Gender Equity Work: Counter-Hegemonic Points of Entry
By Michael Kimmel
*This is the final section of an article entitled Global Masculinities: Restoration and Resistance. The previous sections may be found in the Gender Policy Review archives.
The far right uses a highly charged rhetoric of masculine reclamation and the restoration of public and domestic patriarchies as a recruiting tool among disaffected, downwardly mobile lower middle class white men in both small towns and rural area across the United States. Masculinity becomes a rhetorical currency by which opposition to global integration, state centralization and increasing ethnic heterogeneity can be mobilized. In such cases, we expect to find ideas of traditional, local masculinities and their accompanying hierarchies reaffirmed.
Typically, as Connell notes (1998, p. 17), "hardline masculine fundamentalism goes together with a marked anti-internationalism." It appears equally true that similar groups of men use similar approaches to mobilize their minions in Britain, France, Germany, Austria and other nations that have experienced a right-wing resurgence. Masculinity can become a currency of hegemonic reassertion, an ideology of entitlement to patriarchal privilege.
But masculinity can also be a rhetoric of resistance. Transitional moments often reveal openings, possibilities for change, and, most significantly, points of entry for men into the conversations about gender equality. While the specific content of such points of entry may differ, in the North and South, we can readily identify several arenas for possible integration of men into the discussion of gender and development. All over the world, there are a growing number of organizations devoted to engaging men in gender equity work. Here, I can only point to a few of these organizations before highlighting one of the most successful pro-feminist men’s efforts.
All over the world, organizations, NGOs and volunteer associations have sprung up to engage men in challenging public and domestic patriarchy and men’s entitlement to power. In Chile, FLACSO coordinates a Network of Studies of Masculinidad, to help researchers and professionals utilize recent research on masculinity in their professional outreach. The Norwegian-based International Association for Studies of Men (IASOM) is a worldwide network of researchers and activists who are committed to using gender perspectives to promote gender equality. The European Pro-feminist Men’s Network, organized by Daniel Welzer-Lang in Toulouse, France, brings together European pro-feminist men.
In the United States, the National Organization for Men against Sexism (NOMAS) is perhaps the most comprehensive pro-feminist men’s organization in the world. NOMAS rests on four equal principles, opposing racism, sexism, heterosexism and enhancing men’s lives. NOMAS sponsors conferences and workshops, particularly on the connections among racism sexism and homophobia in the construction of masculinity. Of particular importance are their workshops on violence intervention, where activists who run programs for men who batter share resources and techniques.
Male Socialization
Certainly, a key point of entry into the discussion of changing men’s lives is boyhood socialization. The three primary agencies of gender socialization - family, education, and religion - have all witnessed efforts to improve gender relations through socialization. In the family, for example, increased involvement by fathers has consistently positive effects on both boys and girls socialization. In schools, new programs for the teaching of science and math and efforts to prevent bullying and sexual harassment of girls are vital steps toward empowering girls. As important are efforts to pay attention to the ways in which male socialization steers boys away from intellectual pursuits, and especially the arts and humanities (see Martino, 1996; Mac an Ghaill, 1997). And religious institutions, while more resistant to such social pressures and even reactionary in their efforts to retard gender equality initiatives, have also witnessed increased involvement for women.
In addition, new attention in industrial countries has been focused on the socialization effects of various mass media and peer groups as agents of socialization for boys. Media images often reinforce traditional stereotypes of masculinity and discredit and undermine images that might promote change. Peer emphasis on acting masculine, adopting a "tough guise" (Katz and Jhally, 1999) puts enormous pressure on young boys to exaggerate traditional masculine stereotypes of strength, false control, and risk-taking. Living up to the "boy code" (Pollack, 1997) places boys in a peer-dominated "culture of cruelty" (Kindlon and Thompson, 1998) in which perceived deviation from norms of hyper-masculinity are severely punished.
In fact, the pressure on boys to act masculine is significantly greater than it is for girls, at least in the Anglophone industrial world, where it is, today, far easier these days to be a "tomboy" than it is to be a "sissy."
Health
That health is gendered has long been understood. Women and men have different rates of different diseases, seek medical care differently and in differing amounts, and are unequally affected by global health intervention strategies. One of the major obstacles to women’s improved health care is the same obstacle that inhibits men’s adequate use of available health care systems: traditional ideologies of masculinity. Women who seek to improve access to health care, to avail themselves of existing methods of contraception or practice safer sex often runs "into a wall of un-cooperation from men" (Meursing and Sibindi, 1995). Yet those same ideologies that inhibit women also reduce men’s utilization of health care systems, and discourage safety as part of a sexual repertoire.
Health researcher William Courtenay writes that:
A man who does gender correctly would be relatively unconcerned about his health and well-being in general. He would see himself as stronger, both physically and emotionally than most women. He would think of himself as independent, not needing to be nurtured by others. He would be unlikely to ask others for help... He would face danger fearlessly, take risks frequently, and have little concern for his own safety" (Courtenay, 1998, p. 21).
Or, as one Zimbabwean man put it, "real men don’t get sick" (cited in Foreman, ed., 1999, p. 22)
This is particularly true in efforts to stop the spread of HIV infection around the world. "The HIV epidemic is driven by men," commented Calle Almedal, a senior official with the Joint United Nations AIDS Program (UNAIDS) (cited in Foreman, 1999, p. viii). Of the estimated 30 million people infected with HIV, about 17 million are men (Foreman, ed. 1999, p. 172).
Efforts to integrate men into the international efforts at improving health care will differ in the economic North and South. For example, HIV risk reduction efforts must confront very different issues of masculinity. In both cases, the association of masculinity with risk-taking and irresponsibility have been confronted, but with very different intentions.
In the North, where well over 85% of all HIV-infected people are men, few public health discussions include reference to the fact that HIV is the most "gendered" disease in the history of Europe and North America. (Unlike a "sex-linked" disease, which could only attack one biological sex or the other [as does, for example hemophilia or prostate cancer], a gendered disease is one that could, in principle, affect both women and men equally, but affects one gender disproportionately.)
In the North, then, efforts to reduce HIV infection must confront the association of masculinity with risk-taking by encouraging needle exchange programs (not sharing hypodermic needles) and promoting safe-sex health education campaigns (since men associate unsafe sex with masculine prowess). Thus, for example, in Western Europe, Canada, and the United States, gay men’s organizations have expressly designed safe sex promotional campaigns and clubs that keep safe sex "sexy," i.e. enable it to retain the demonstration of masculinity through sexual behavior (see, for example, Kimmel and Levine, 1993).
In the economic South, the rates of HIV infections are on relative par, or cases among women actually outnumber those among men (Africa, Asia, and Latin America). This gender imbalance towards women actually reflects more accurately the character epidemiology of the disease in heterosexual non-IV drug using populations, where women are at greater risk for HIV than are men through unprotected heterosexual intercourse. In sub-Saharan Africa, 60-80% of women infected with HIV have had only on sexual partner (Adler, et al., 1996), so efforts to decrease promiscuity among females would be unsuccessful.
Here, HIV risk reduction also requires men’s taking responsibility for birth control by wearing condoms, when in many cultures ignoring the health risks to one’s partner or eschewing birth control and fathering many children are equally signs of masculine control and power. In Thailand, for example, condoms are seen as appropriate only for casual sex, but not in the context of a relationship (Cash and Anasuchatkul, 1993). In Senegal, men may suspect that a woman is a sex worker or has other lovers if she requests condom use (Niang, Benga and Camara, 1997). In this way, the spread of HIV among women in the South may also be an indirect consequence of masculine resistance - reassertion of domestic patriarchy - to global or national integration.
Efforts to reduce the risk of HIV also run into culturally sanctioned homophobia. In the economic North, where rates of infection are highest among men who have sex with men, homophobia remains a major obstacle to acknowledging potential risks. In some countries, where cultural prescriptions against homosexuality are strongest, men who have sex with men remain frightened into secrecy, and rarely are able to seek treatment. In Kenya, for example, officially sanctioned homophobia - the current president, Daniel arap Moi claimed that "Kenya has no room or time for homosexuals and lesbians" - has resulted in a very high rate of infection (about 1.2 million) among men who have sex with men as well as among women (see Foreman, ed,. 1999, p. 123).
Though intervention strategies in both the North and South confront the masculine equation of risk-taking and masculinity, the consequences are different for both women and for men. Yet in both cases, masculinity remains the chief risk factor for the spread of this "gendered" disease, and the imperative to bring masculinity into the public health discussion about HIV is increasingly pressing.
Work and Family
Despite the shifts in women’s roles outside the home, men’s roles inside the home have changed relatively little. Fathers typically contribute less than one-third the total amount of time spent in child-care (Bruce, 1995). In the industrial nations, women still perform the "second shift," responsible for most of the housework and child care, in addition to their work outside it (see Hochschild, 1994). However, there is some evidence of increased domestic activities by men, particularly in countries with well-developed welfare states that encourage men’s participation, such as the Nordic countries. In those countries, most men now take some amount of paid parental leave.
The recent public discussion about the impact of fatherlessness in the industrial nations has focused more on the form of the family - the presence or absence of the father - and far less on the content of family life. Yet the research is clear that the simple presence or absence of the father tells us little about his impact on child development. While "a nurturing, supportive partner in economic, domestic and child care responsibilities has immeasurable positive effects on the physical, emotional and financial welfare of children," it is equally true that "non-functioning or abusive men in families can cause tremendous hardship and suffering" (Foumbi and Lovich, 1997, p. 21). It is not surprising then that in the United States, boys exhibited more empathy for others when their fathers had been actively engaged in child-care (Miedzian, 1991).
Violence
The association of masculinity and violence is especially urgent, in both the economic North and South. In the United States, men and boys are responsible for 95% of all violent crimes. Every day twelve boys and young men commit suicide – seven times the number of girls. Every day eighteen boys and young men die from homicide – ten times the number of girls. From an early age, boys learn that violence is not only an acceptable form of conflict resolution, but also one that is admired. Four times more teenage boys than teenage girls think fighting is appropriate when someone cuts into the front of a line. Half of all teenage boys get into a physical fight each year. Cultural acceptance for male violence is widespread. Researchers from the Pan American Health Organization (PAHO note that "[n]ot only are boys allowed to be openly aggressive and fight with their fists, but this type of behavior is expected of them" (in Foreman, 1999, p. 53).
Violence has been part of the meaning of manhood, part of the way men have traditionally tested, demonstrated and proved their manhood. Without another cultural mechanism by which young boys can come to think of themselves as men, they’ve eagerly embraced violence as a way to become men. Violence against women is widespread in both the economic North and South. Its forms and extent may vary, but it is increasingly seen as a form of backlash, an effort by men who feel the erosion of either domestic or public (or both) patriarchal privilege. Violence against women is thus an individualized means to restore domestic or public patriarchy. "When male authority is challenged there is often an increase in domestic violence, as authority figures attempt to maintain control over the family" (Penn, 1994).
This model of violence as the result of a breakdown of patriarchy, of entitlement thwarted, has become the bedrock of the therapeutic work with violent men. Again and again, what the research on rape, on domestic violence finds is that men initiate violence when they feel a loss of power to which they felt entitled. Here is how one young man put it in an interview in which he was asked to consider under what circumstances he might commit rape. Jay is a 23 year-old stock-boy who works in a San Francisco corporation. He says:
Let’s say I see a woman and she looks really pretty and really clean and sexy and she’s giving off very feminine, sexy vibes. I think, wow I would love to make love to her, but I know she’s not interested. It’s a tease. A lot of times a woman knows that she’s looking really good and she’ll use that and flaunt it and it makes me feel like she’s laughing at me and I feel degraded. . . If I were actually desperate enough to rape somebody it would be from wanting that person, but also it would be a very spiteful thing, just being able to say ‘I have power over you and I can do anything I want with you’ because really I feel that they have power over me just by their presence. Just the fact that they can come up to me and just melt me makes me feel like a dummy, makes me want revenge. They have power over me so I want power over them (in Beneke, 1982).
Notice how violence is retaliatory, a form of revenge, a compensation for the power that he feels women have over him.
But violence against women is more than the aggregation of individual events by men who feel their privileged position slipping from under their feet. The threat of violence affects all women and provides one of the most serious obstacles to the achievement of women’s equality. Violence against women takes a variety of forms, from cultural prescriptions that promote or demand female genital mutilation to rape, spousal assault, and sexual harassment in the workplace and in the public sphere more generally.
To diminish men’s violence against women, and to reduce the violent confrontations that take place in the name of such mythic entities as nation, people, religion, or tribe, we must confront the separation of symbolic and structural spheres. Women’s involvement in public life is equally important as men’s involvement as parents. And the definition of masculinity must be able to acknowledge a far wider range of emotions, including fear, without having that identity as a man threatened. And we must develop mechanisms to dislodge men’s sense of identity from that false sense of entitlement.
In the economic North, pro-feminist men’s organizations work alongside women’s shelters to confront men’s violence. Over 100 men’s groups in the United States - including Men Overcoming Violence (MOVE) in San Francisco, St. Louis’s Rape and Violence End Now (RAVEN), the Massachusetts-based Men’s Resource Center, upstate New York’s Volunteer Counseling Service, and Boston’s EMERGE - actively work to end men’s violence against women. Such groups typically conduct batterers’ groups, composed to convicted batterers who choose an alternative to incarceration. Many of these groups are affiliated with NOMAS, which conducts annual workshops for men who are involved in batterers intervention programs. In Australia, the Men Against Sexual Assault (MASA) is a network of community groups concerned about violence. MASA encourages men to take responsibility for actions against sexual or physical assault.
Perhaps the most successful intervention program worldwide is the White Ribbon Campaign (WRC). The Campaign was founded in Canada in 1991 as a specific response by men to the murder of 14 women in Montreal. The WRC invites men to wear white ribbons for one week symbolizing their opposition to men’s violence against women, and to develop local responses to support battered women and to challenge men’s violence.
The premise of the campaign is straightforward: there are many men who do not commit acts of violence against women. But these men have been silent and through that silence, have allowed the violence to continue. Wearing a white ribbon (in most countries, for one or two weeks commencing November 25, the International Day for the Eradication of Violence against Women), is a means to break that silence and encourage self- reflection. Wearing the ribbon is a public pledge never to commit, condone, nor remain silent about violence against women, and it is a call on governments and all institutions controlled by men to seriously address the issue.
It is strictly non-partisan and includes men from across the social and political spectrum. It works closely with women's organizations and urges men to listen to the voices and concerns of women. In some countries it raises money for women's programmes as well as for its own activities. It is much more than simply wearing the white ribbon. Perhaps the most important component of its programming is its educational materials aimed at boys. Such materials draw boys and girls into classroom and extracurricular activities that look at gender roles, at violence against women and, for adolescents, at dating behavior. The WRC also conducts media campaigns and involves high-profile men in speaking out against the violence. In some cases it does work on issues around fatherhood, encouraging men to be more active and nurturing parents. In some countries it has helped develop coordinated community responses to violence against women.
White Ribbon's basic philosophy, then, is that while not all men are responsible for committing violence against women, all men and boys must take responsibility for helping bring it to an end. Today, WRC has become a national institution in Canada and has since spread – to varying degrees of public profile and activity – to a number of countries in Europe, as well as several countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia and in the United States and Australia. Each national and regional campaign is democratically and locally controlled.
Conclusion
Nearly two decades ago, Norwegian social anthropologist Signe Howell and Roy Willis found that the definition of masculinity had a significant impact on the status of women, and especially the levels of violence, both against women and against other men. In those societies in which men were permitted to acknowledge fear, levels of violence were low. In those societies, however, where masculine bravado, the repression and denial of fear, was a defining feature of masculinity, violence was likely to be high. These are a few of the themes that anthropologists have isolated as leading towards both interpersonal violence and inter-societal violence:
- The ideal for manhood is the fierce and handsome warrior.
- Public leadership is associated with male dominance, both of men over other men and of men over women.
- Women are prohibited from public and political participation.
- Most public interaction is between men, not between men and women or among women.
- Boys and girls are systematically separated from an early age.
- Initiation of boys is focused on lengthy constraint of boys, during which time the boys are separated from women, taught male solidarity, bellicosity, and endurance, and trained to accept the dominance of older groups of men.
- Emotional displays of male virility, ferocity, and sexuality are highly elaborated.
- The ritual celebration of fertility focuses on male generative ability, not female ones.
- Male economic activities and the products of male labor are prized over female.
The value of such anthropological comparisons is that they provide documentation that it need not be this way; that it can be otherwise. It gives empirical solidity to our hopes, a non-utopian, concreteness to our vision. Making it otherwise, however, will require dramatic transformations, in the ideal definition of what it means to be a man and the cultural prescriptions that govern the relationships among men and between women and men. Taken together, the projects we have described provide various points of entry to engage men in the personal and political discussions about gender and development, and particularly to engage men as women’s allies in their struggle for equality.
Michael Kimmel is a Professor of Sociology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He has written and edited numerous books on masculinity and lectures widely on gender issues. Some of Kimmel's works include Manhood: The American Quest (1996), he is also Editor of Changing Men (1987), Men Confront Pornography (1990), and with Michael Messner, Men's Lives (1995).
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