Policy BRIEFING

ISSUE 105 • DECEMBER 2015

Building Alliances to
Address Sexual and
Gender-based Violence
It is now widely accepted that effective strategies to end sexual and genderbased violence (SGBV) must engage with men and boys. In practice, however,
the relationship between traditional women’s rights movements and
organisations working on engaging men and boys is an uneasy one. There is
a necessity to understand these tensions between women’s movements and
work with men. We must address feminist concerns about the exclusion of
women’s rights, moving away from the ‘men as protectors’ approach and take
seriously concerns of lack of funding in specific areas. Alongside this, exploring
opportunities for learning across movements will be integral to building better
alliances in the future.
Key tensions between women’s
movements and work with men

The growing recognition of the
importance of engaging men and boys
in strategies to address sexual and
gender-based violence (SGBV) has been
motivated by a push towards primary
prevention and a desire to address
men’s role as perpetrators of violence,
as well as by increasing understanding
that patriarchal norms that construct
harmful masculinities are implicated
in fuelling this violence. Both men
and women are recognised as being
negatively affected by patriarchal
inequality and so must both be a part of
the response. This approach is not only
consistent with evidence from IDS, and
our global partners, but also through
the work of other activists, advocates
and researchers on these issues.
Such thinking forms part of
transformative approaches which involve
men and women working together
in order to change gender roles and
create more respectful and egalitarian
relationships. As an activist in India
outlined, there needs to be space for
men and women to ‘talk to each other
and hold each other accountable for

gender equality.’ Movements, such as
“In work with
Sonke Gender Justice in South Africa,
men and boys,
adopt this thinking in their work, as they
it is often
do not identify as a men’s movement,
perceived by the
but a gender justice movement that
works for the rights of women and men women’s rights
to live free from violence and inequality.
movements, and
In spite of this acknowledgement, along feminist scholars,
with the presence of gender equality and
that there is the
civil society organisations that engage
risk that feminist
men, tensions often exist between
traditional women’s rights movements
concerns about
and organisations and networks
women’s rights
engaging men and boys to address SGBV.
Excluding feminist concerns about
women’s rights
In work with men and boys, it is often
perceived by the women’s rights
movements, and feminist scholars, that
there is the risk that feminist concerns
about women’s rights will be quietly
moved to the periphery of the policy
agenda. Particularly within the field of
SGBV, the fear is that an unintended
consequence of the emphasis on
working with men and boys to change
their gender attitudes and practices
could be that women’s empowerment
and violence prevention work with
women would receive insufficient
attention. Recent case studies in India,

will be quietly
moved to the
periphery of the
policy agenda.”

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Kenya and South Africa reveal these tensions
and scepticism of the possible role that men
can play in addressing SGBV, but it is important
to stress that these approaches to work
with men documented with IDS take a clear
pro-feminist stance.
In South Africa, activists and practitioners
working in traditional women’s rights
organisations highlighted the critical work they
are doing with women on the violence and
abuse that men perpetrate against them. They
argued that this work is fundamental to the
security of women, and it is therefore not only
their responsibility to work with men.
These tensions may result, as in the case of
Kenya, in a hostile attitude towards men’s
engagement, which is at times perceived
as promoting ‘men’s rights’, often at the
expense of women’s, although the groups
involved in Kenya clearly distance themselves
from such ‘men’s rights’ groups. Similar
experiences are shared by Men’s Action to
Stop Violence Against Women (MASVAW)
activists in the India case study; accounts of
suspicion from some women’s organisations
‘that may think that groups like MASVAW
are not legitimate,’ or are working towards ‘a
protectionist as opposed to a transformative
approach.’ These negative perceptions
about men’s involvement in movements to
champion gender equality can be seen as a
major hindrance to men’s engagement in the
fight against SGBV.
Men as protectors
A second concern relates to particular
strategies for engaging with men and boys
that find entry points through conservative,
traditional and religious values, for example
promoting the role of man as protector.
Country case studies in Sierra Leone and
South Africa reveal that this emphasis on
men protecting ‘their’ women is centred
on a philosophy which presents women as
deserving protection because they are sisters,
wives, and mothers, and not as human beings.
This ideology, which presents women as in
need of male protection, diminishes women’s
agency by placing them in a space that they
need to be rescued from.
Findings from Sierra Leone suggest that
while men should, and do, play an active role
in advocating for women’s human rights,

this is often premised under the context that
women did not have the sufficient power
or agency to advocate for these rights in
customary courts, or in their interpersonal
relationships; and conversely, it followed
a logic that men had power that could be
used to harm, or to protect, women. Whilst
many of the groups involved recognise these
tensions but appeal to men to use their
position of privilege more responsibly, for
women’s rights organisations in South Africa,
these strategies are seen as contributing to
the maintenance of patriarchy. Case studies
from India and Kenya show how organisations
and networks mobilising men around
gender justice, reject the ‘male as protector’
approach, instead taking up a critique of
patriarchy as unjust and harmful to women,
as well as to men and children.
Funding and resource allocation
As there is limited funding for organisations
working to provide resources to people
affected by SGBV, this adds to the tensions
in relation to engaging men in addressing
SGBV. The African Population and Health
Research Centre (APHRC), IDS and Men for
Gender Equality Now (MEGEN) highlight
that since 2000 there has been a depletion
in resources to civil society organisations
supporting women’s rights issues. There is a
concern that within this landscape of limited
funds, organisations focused on bringing men
into the discussion are taking away funding
and attention from more traditional women’s
rights movement. As Srilatha Batliwala
writes, these organisations have historically
played a huge role in highlighting the role
of patriarchal masculinities in perpetuating
gender discrimination and violence, and
calling for men to become allies, but are
now struggling with a decline in funding for
transformative strategies.

“The growing
recognition of
the importance
of engaging
men and boys
in strategies to
address SGBV has
been motivated
by a push towards
primary prevention
and a desire to
address men’s role
as perpetrators of
MASVAW activists in India shared the fear
violence, as well
raised by women’s groups that men’s groups
as by increasing
may try to divert the resources that are
understanding
available for the women’s organisations and
that patriarchal
that ‘in the patriarchal structure, will not
norms that
these men’s groups try to use this network
for their own profit; won’t they start working
construct harmful
towards the men’s benefit.’ Furthermore,
masculinities
a related fear was whether this might
are implicated
‘contribute to the depletion of the work
in fuelling this
with women.’ Evidence from Kenya shows
that men’s organisations are often perceived
violence.”

BUILDING ALLIANCES TO ADDRESS SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE ISSUE 105 • DECEMBER 2015	

as competitors to women’s organisations,
suggesting that men’s groups are seen to be
‘in it to capitalise on women’s resources’.

How have men and women’s
movements addressed these tensions?
Moving beyond the ‘mothers-wives-sistersdaughters’ narrative
In Egypt, while interventions on SGBV have
been led and implemented by women, due
to it being strongly associated with ‘women’s
issues’ and often tackled as women’s
problem, the presence of men as founders,
leaders and members of youth-led informal
initiatives such as Shoft Taharosh, Bassma
and Opantish has changed the face of
gender activism in the country. One effective
approach to challenge dominant perspectives
of masculinities and change the image of
what it is to be a man has been to encourage
men to think about and understand SGBV
from their own perspectives. Hence,
without directly talking about women’s
rights, by using notions of humanity and
fairness, a new narrative is put forward. As
a result of these initiatives, there have been
significant changes. Women are claiming
public spaces to which they were previously
denied access, men and women are united
in working together towards common
goals in tackling lax security which leads to
increased assaults, a wave of citizen activism
sweeping the country in an unprecedented
manner, and increased engagement through
demonstrations, protests and strikes.
In Uganda, the importance of solidarities
around principles of equity and inclusion are
highlighted by the experience of isolation
by male survivors of conflict-related sexual
violence. These survivors are mobilising to
build peer support groups. These groups are
comparatively new, few and far-between
for male refugees in the Ugandan context
and there is not large-scale organising such
as that developed by women over many
years to address SGBV. Whilst focused on
highlighting the hidden experiences and plight
of male victims of sexual violence, the groups
are increasingly engaging with their female
partners and other support organisations
serving the needs of refugees under an
equal human rights framing. This also steers
away from the narrow framing that presents
victimhood as essentially female and thus

“Such thinking
forms part of
transformative
Men’s groups working in solidarity with
approaches which
women and for women’s rights agenda
involve men and
Across the different institutions and levels of
the MASVAW movement in India, women
women working
and men are constructing alliances, from
together in order
interpersonal to institutional. MASVAW
to change gender
identifies as a pro-feminist movement, and has
roles and create
established formal relationships with a number
of women’s organisations that work to support more respectful
women survivors of violence, including legal,
and egalitarian
medical, social mediation and other services.
relationships.”
women as essentially vulnerable rather than
having agency.

MASVAW works with these organisations
both at the level of referral in cases of violence,
documentation of cases and also on strategies
for primary prevention (such as community
sensitisation and participatory education
where each partner organisation works with
men and women respectively to ensure that
support and understanding is appropriate
to their context) or secondary prevention,
through mediation and negotiation in cases of
separation or reconciliation.

Allies in the feminist movement are strong
partners and have contributed to major
gains in knowledge and influence, where
those partnerships have been robust. The
relationships with women’s organisations
have been highlighted as integral for
MASVAW, including in the founding of the
campaign, in order to learn across gendered
perspectives, experiences and ideas. Activists
argued that, where meaningful partnerships
are built, working with women’s rights
organisations and feminist groups can
strengthen the accountability of the campaign
and the transformative potentials of the
activism. MASVAW activists highlighted how
they envisage their alliances and partnerships
with women’s organisations as transformative
in that they aim to recognise and promote
women’s positions of leadership. MASVAW
is working with men and women within a
village to support women’s representation
within the Panchayat and within academic
institutions to support women’s equal
participation in decision-making on gender
issues. The MASVAW activists expressed
how the representation of women within
their partnerships must support new ways of
interacting, so that they reflect the dynamics
and egalitarian relationships that they are
trying to achieve in wider contexts.

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Master Logo

Policy recommendations
Stay accountable to the goal of transformative change
Work which engages men and boys can remain accountable to work by women’s
rights movements on SGBV specifically, and gender justice more generally by:
•	 Acknowledging the huge role that women’s rights movements have already
played in highlighting and responding to issues of SGBV.
•	 Holding men to account for the privilege and power they enjoy and wield in
relation to other men and women. This can be done by encouraging men to
be actively involved and committed to redistributing power and privilege by
constantly questioning more pervasive and ingrained structural inequalities.
•	 Ensuring that such initiatives which advocate for gender transformation, but in
fact quietly maintain normative gender roles that situate women lower than men
within the organisation’s hierarchy, challenge and question these norms internally.
•	 Encouraging organisations working on engaging men and boys to look internally
at women’s leadership in the programmes and campaigns that men are a part of.
•	 Making sure that women’s leadership and voices remain central to work
addressing SGBV and achieving gender justice.
Promote alliances between movements
Meaningful collaboration, dialogue and mutual learning will contribute to the
dynamism, reach and depth of the network and can be achieved by:
•	 Working with men and women, boys and girls, and marginalised gender
identities across the various intersecting issues that influence their lives and
opportunities. This would require a better understanding of how an intersectional
approach can highlight the ways in which privilege and discrimination manifests.
•	 Envisaging alliances between women’s and men’s groupings as partnerships,
where organisations working with men and boys engage in dialogue and
conversations with women’s rights movements.
•	 Ensuring that efforts to engage men and boys are developed and implemented in
ongoing consultation with groups working to promote and protect women’s rights.
This might include, for instance, involving women’s rights organisations in strategic
planning processes. In this way programmes that involve men and boys can be seen
not as a substitute to work with women’s and girls’ rights, but as complementary.
•	 Getting activists and practitioners to actively commit to challenging rigid
leadership structures and negative power dynamics through the recognition of
and support for women’s leadership within men’s movements.
Move away from the ‘men as protector’ narrative
Organisations and networks that work with men can enable change towards
gender equality that works towards transformative change for men and women by:
•	 Addressing women’s status so that women are seen as autonomous human
beings and not the property of men.
•	 Highlighting how men themselves are affected and exposed to SGBV as a way
to break the normalised images of masculinity.
Take seriously the concerns of drains on resources for women’s rights
Activists and organisations working with men and boys should:
•	 Make sure they advocate for funding and recognition for SGBV, and gender
equality work more broadly, not just for work to engage men and boys
specifically. This should be done in cooperation with women’s rights movements.

IDS Policy Briefings are published by the Institute of Development Studies and aim to provide high quality
analysis and practical recommendations for policymakers on important development issues.
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IDS POLICY BRIEFING ISSUE 105 • DECEMBER 2015	

Further reading
Batliwala, S. (2014) ‘Carving a
Space: Reflections on the 2nd
MenEngage Symposium’, The
Association for Women’s Rights in
Development, AWID News &
Analysis blog
Ricardo, C. (2015) Men,
Masculinities, and Changing
Power: A Discussion Paper on
Engaging Men in Gender Equality
from Beijing 1995 to 2015, Men
Engage Alliance
Shahrokh, T. with Edström, J.
(2015) ‘Sexual and Gender-based
Violence’, in J. Edström,
A. Hassink, T. Shahrokh and
E. Stern (eds), Engendering Men: A
Collaborative Review of Evidence
on Men and Boys in Social
Change and Gender Equality,
EMERGE Evidence Review,
Promundo-US, Sonke Gender
Justice and Institute
of Development Studies,
Brighton: IDS
Case studies from Egypt, India,
Kenya, Sierra Leone, South
Africa and Uganda on collective
action and engaging men and
boys to address sexual and
gender-based violence can be
read on Interactions:
http://interactions.eldis.org/
gender-based-violence

Credits
This IDS Policy Briefing was written
by Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed and
edited by Carol Smithyes. It
was produced as a result of a
collaborative process with global
research partners, in connection
with the ‘Effective Organised
Activism against Gender-based
Violence’ stream of the IDS
programme Influencing Policies
to Support the Empowerment
of Women and Girls. The
programme is supported by UK
aid from the UK Department for
International Development.
The opinions expressed are
those of the author and do not
necessarily reflect the views of
IDS or the UK government’s
official policies.
Readers are encouraged to quote
and reproduce material from
issues of IDS Policy Briefings in
their own publication. IDS requests
due acknowledgement and quotes
to be referenced as above.
AG Level 2 Output ID: 124
© Institute of Development Studies, 2015
ISSN 1479-974X

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