Policy BRIEFING

ISSUE 108 • JANUARY 2016

Engaging Men for Effective
Activism against Sexual and
Gender-based Violence
Men are becoming ever more visible as integral partners in tackling sexual
and gender-based violence (SGBV), holding themselves, peers and powerholders accountable for maintaining harmful gender norms that perpetuate
violence. To maximise the potential of working with men to ensure inclusion,
and sustainability in the response to SGBV, the global programme on Effective
Organised Activism against Gender-based Violence highlights the importance
of addressing the underlying structural causes of violence. It calls for efforts
to address these challenges by applying gendered context and power analysis
in understanding and identifying barriers to address SGBV, engaging men in
prevention and response not just as ‘protectors’ of women, and building a
shared agenda between individuals, communities and networks involving men
and women. This approach not only enables a deeper understanding of the
complexities around SGBV, but provides important lessons to be shared.
Collective action to address
SGBV

Feminist movement-building has played
a critical role in ensuring that legislation
and policies on gender-based violence
(GBV) are created and that there is
accountability for implementation.
The main emphasis of working with
men and boys to end SGBV has been
towards individual and small groups,
focusing on understanding how the
costs of masculinity can harm individual
women and men within unhealthy
relationships. There are a growing
number of examples where men
engage as gender equality activists and
mobilise from a pro-feminist standpoint
to demand social and gender justice.
This research programme has explored
the role of men in collective action to
address SGBV, and the extent to which
outcomes are transformative.
Situating the role of collective action
in the prevention and response to
SGBV, the programme highlights the
importance of recognising the complex
and dynamic nature of violence in specific
contexts and its diversity across settings.

For example, understanding sexual
“There are
harassment in public spaces in Egypt
a growing
requires a different contextual analysis
number of
than understanding intimate partner
examples
violence in post-conflict Sierra Leone.
where men
This includes challenging simple
interpretations of men and women’s
engage as
social roles and the frequent assumption
gender equality
of men being perpetrators and women
activists and
victims of violence. Understanding cycles
mobilise from
of victimhood and perpetration, for
example, is critical in engaging in the
a pro-feminist
lives of young men involved in gangs in
standpoint to
South Africa.

Focus on structural and
institutional factors

demand social
and gender
justice.”

The work points to the need to get
to the root causes of SGBV, including:
gender inequality, increasing economic
inequality, weak and inadequate laws
and legal frameworks. Furthermore,
practices of violence are shaped by
how patriarchal privilege and power,
inequalities of identity and cultural
systems play out in specific contexts.
SGBV is therefore seen to be driven
by an interplay between personal,
situational and wider social, political

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Country

Programme focus

Egypt

Exploring effective citizen-led initiatives in the struggle against gender-based violence in-between
Egypt’s two revolutions

Kenya

How collective action and the involvement of men and boys influence the prospects of changing
community norms regarding SGBV in Kenya

India

The Men’s Action to Stop Violence Against Women (MASVAW) campaign as a networked
approach to challenging patriarchy across institutions in India

Sierra Leone

The legacy of conflict and the struggle to end SGBV in Sierra Leone

South Africa

The role of individual agency and collective action for addressing structural and gender-based
violence in South Africa

Uganda

Survivor support groups as spaces of empowerment for male refugees who have survived conflictrelated sexual violence and are now living in Uganda

and economic issues. In the programme’s
India case study, gender inequalities are seen
as constructed in relation to ever-changing
connections between patriarchy, nationalism,
religion, caste and class. Analysing the
contemporary and historical gendered
realities of this context can provide a map
that helps to find pathways for social change.

Create spaces with men to build
personal commitment and political
action

Initiatives that engage men need to recognise
and understand participants’ expectations
from the outset in order to understand their
motivations. Entry points for men joining
a group can be diverse, initially this is often
through peer support. In Kenya and Sierra
Leone men were engaged as gatekeepers,
decision-makers, fathers, brothers and sons
in programmes and through community
mobilisation in order to build empathy for
women. In Uganda it was about providing
a physical and social space for men as
survivors of violence for healing from
trauma. Acknowledging that change is a
personal and emotional process, enabling
self-reflection and mutual learning on issues
of gender norms, privileges and socialisation is
important. Many activists face resentment and
isolation from their families and communities
when challenging gender norms. However,
as these groups build an identity and the
purpose of the group evolves, these men
are further supported in their action. Yet
still, when initiating spaces of engagement,
questions of legitimacy of who is creating
the space, who is included or excluded, and
how decisions are being made need to be
considered.

Context matters

Understanding context is integral to sustainable
and transformative change as it shapes the
process of collective action across societal
levels. The programme has shown that
distinct contexts shape how social norms
are constructed and influence how and why
collective action emerges over time and space.
Therefore, gendered context and power
analyses need to highlight barriers and drivers
of change to address SGBV. Such context
analyses enable the identification of key building
blocks of collective action strategies engaging
men and boys to address SGBV by transforming
unequal power relations. Connections need to
be purposefully made between men’s personal
processes of change, grass-roots mobilisation
with men, and in efforts to change broader
social and economic policies that influence
SGBV. This process could include:
•	 Consciousness raising; i.e. critical reflection
and consciousness raising on harmful
expressions of power over others and the
way that different inequalities and privileges
interact to maintain exclusion;
“Acknowledging
•	 Walking the talk; i.e. shifting personal
that change
behaviours towards gender equality and
is a personal
social justice within private and public life;
•	 Public collaborations in gender solidarity; i.e.
and emotional
community mobilisation and solidarity
process,
expressed publicly in actions with women
enabling selfand marginalised groups to address attitudes,
norms and behaviours that perpetuate SGBV; reflection and
mutual learning
•	 Advocacy for systemic change; i.e. changes
in the wider system through demanding
on issues of
political accountability and effective laws and gender norms,
policies by alliance-building across gender
privileges and
equality and social justice movements, and
socialisation is
inclusion of grass-roots activist groups
within institutional settings.
important.”

ENGAGING MEN FOR EFFECTIVE ACTIVISM AGAINST SEXUAL AND GENDER-BASED VIOLENCE ISSUE 108 • JANUARY 2016	

Working in collaboration across
diverse networks and social levels

Collaborations across individuals, groups and
institutions are valuable for three reasons.
First, the role of a collective in providing a safe
and supportive haven is essential for individuals
to keep engaged. Experiences in India and
South Africa showed that a sense of belonging
and equality within a group that supports the
personal process of changing identities helps
ongoing negotiations about individual and
project goals and sustains engagement.
Second, working with people in institutions,
for example police, pastors, teachers, etc., can
help to ensure change within places where
traditional structures of institutionalised gender
inequality exist. Relationships for engaging with
men and boys need to be identified, and can,
where appropriate, include collaboration with
traditional and religious leaders as gatekeepers.
This was important in Kenya for opening up
previously closed spaces at the community level
to discuss SGBV issues with men.
Third, strategic alliances, partnerships
and networks across sectors, particularly
with women’s organisations, are critical.
Organisations can learn from each other,
be role models with respect to their unique
strengths and comparative advantages, and
challenge the status quo together. Building
synergies around intersections and shared goals
across movements can be a way not only to
make effective use of sparse material resources
and share human capital, but also to increase
pressure for change. Across these partnerships
it is important to install mechanisms of
accountability for gender equality.

Relationships matter for sustaining
changes

Providing safe spaces is one way to maintain
trust, motivation and engagement over time.
Garnering support from peers within activist
networks and organisations, building a shared
agenda with communities and building diverse
alliances are all strategies to sustain and extend
localised change geographically and/or across
institutions.
Tapping into existing structures in society and
using these as examples to show different
types of relationships and engagement is
one way to engage individuals and convince
them of specific project goals. This requires
good knowledge of local contexts. For
example, in the Uttar Pradesh (India) case

study, advantages of smaller and more nuclear “Recognising the
families, which are becoming more prevalent
achievements
in Uttar Pradesh, were used by male activists
and challenges
as alternative role models for more equitable
of – and backlash
partnerships. Good leadership, lobbying for
to – change
support in formal and informal institutions,
and raising awareness, for example by using
requires taking
media, are important ingredients to encourage into account
and sustain engagement and achieve change.
Recognising the achievements and challenges
of – and backlash to – change requires
taking into account the social and cultural
dimensions, and the contextual patriarchal
underpinnings of gender inequalities. Regular
monitoring, analysis and renegotiation of a
project’s achievements and goals are crucial
to understand where and how changes occur.
Critically analysing backlash and its various
sources can help reinforce the project or
movement’s agenda, strategy and identity, and
help keep members motivated and engaged.

the social
and cultural
dimensions, and
the contextual
patriarchal
underpinnings
of gender
inequalities.”

Time is needed for adapting, learning
and showing the impact of collective
action

Implementing projects that address SGBV takes
time, because they aim to achieve complex
change of deeply rooted gender inequalities.
Often, time and resource constraints put
pressures on the transfer of knowledge and
implementation practices from one initiative to
another. Moving to scale should always allow
for time to learn and adapt.
Additionally, sufficient time should be allowed
for teams to learn from their experience
after project completion. Current funding
architectures usually do not allow for this,
impeding valuable reflection, documentation
and knowledge generation that could be
transferred and used in other projects. Training
and capacity building across institutions in
South Africa has shown the need to go
beyond broad one-off approaches.
Finally, the pressure to generate evidence can
divert attention and resources from projects
with potentially low short-term – but high
long-term – impact to projects with high
visible short-term impact only. Opportunities
to investigate whether projects that involve
complex social change, such as the projects
within this programme, have had long-term
impacts would prove useful in order to better
understand what works, and what types of
activities should be promoted, supported and
further developed.

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Lessons for policy and programming
Why support collective action?
•	 Collective action provides a platform to change SGBV outcomes over the longerterm through mobilisation to address the underlying structural dynamics of violence.
•	 Collective action can enable interventions to work at multiple levels, with citizens and
institutions and with diverse stakeholders across the community, including cultural,
religious and political leaders. This can lead to change in the wider system and opens
up opportunities to engage a broader range of relevant men in ending SGBV.
•	 Collective action between men working for gender equality and women’s organisations
can help ensure accountability of men to achieving positive work towards women’s rights.
What approaches work best for effectively engaging men in collective action?
•	 Work with men to address SGBV should engage men as agents of change in the
prevention and response, and not just as perpetrators or bystanders. Within this, men
need to be held to account for personal change and work together with women to
take political action.
•	 Gendered context and power analyses are essential for identifying barriers and drivers
of change to address SGBV and the position of men and masculinities within.
•	 Strategies for collective action need to ensure that connections are understood and
made between men’s own processes of change, grass-roots mobilisation for gender
equality, as well as efforts to change broader policies that influence SGBV. The
personal is political.
•	 Activities should involve individuals and small groups in safe spaces, but also extend to
collaborations with and across institutions, across gender and generations, that is, in
partnerships and networks across sectors and alliances with women’s organisations.
Mechanisms of accountability for gender equality are important aspects across these
partnerships.
•	 A shared agenda must be built with individuals, communities and across partnerships and
networks. It is important to recognise that these collaborations need to be strategic and
that not all men or community members are equally necessary to engage. Goals and
achievements of this agenda must be regularly scrutinised in order to understand where
and how changes occur and what needs to be done to make them sustainable.
•	 Time must be allowed for learning, transfer of knowledge and adaptation of good
practices from one programme or territory to others. Opportunities to study longterm effects of past projects would help identify workable pathways for social change
with men for gender equality.

Moving beyond male protectionism and paternalism
Where work with men is building on men’s concern for women’s safety, as in
work with men to address SGBV, risks of strengthening patriarchal norms are high.
Engaging men should not reinforce a sense of male supremacy, by simply appealing
to men as ‘protectors’ of women and girls.

Further reading
Research reports from South
Africa, India, Sierra Leone,
Kenya, Egypt and Uganda, on
which this briefing is based, are
available on the Interactions on
Women’s Empowerment
website (http://interactions.eldis.
org/gender-based-violence).
Web pages relating to the India,
South Africa and Uganda case
studies include visual outputs
that outline personal and shared
narratives by activists.

Credits
This IDS Policy Briefing was
written by Catherine Müller and
Thea Shahrokh, and edited by
Carol Smithyes, 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: 318
© Institute of Development Studies, 2016
ISSN 1479-974X

Men should be engaged as agents of change holding themselves and their
communities accountable for rejecting SGBV on the grounds of dismantling
oppression and claiming human rights. Working together with women to
challenge problematic gender roles and expectations amongst both men and
women strengthens this accountability and provides space for mutual learning and
redefinition of harmful gender norms.

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 108 • JANUARY 2016	

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