Beyond ‘working with men and boys’: (re)defining, challenging and transforming masculinities in sexuality and health programmes and policy

In the 21 years since the 1994 Cairo International Conference on Population and Development, those working in the fields of health and sexuality have seen changing ‘men and masculinities’ as central to struggles to improve the health of women and men (Cornwall, Edstrom, and Greig 2011; Peacock and Barker 2014). Efforts to respond to men’s violence and HIV, in particular, have focused on understanding the links between masculinities and men’s health-related behaviour, and increasingly on engaging men and boys as a pathway to transforming masculinities (Jewkes, Flood, and Lang 2015; Mane and Aggleton 2001; Peacock and Barker 2014). Perhaps as a consequence of these efforts, the phrase ‘We need to work with men and boys’ has become something of a mantra dominating health and sexuality programmes. In the past few years, there have been a number of reviews of interventions that have sought to work specifically with men and boys to promote health-enhancing behaviours. These reviews have highlighted the important role that interventions engaging men and boys can have in reducing men’s use of violence against women (Dworkin, Treves-Kagan, and Lippman 2013; Jewkes, Flood, and Lang 2015), increasing access to HIV-testing (Hensen et al. 2014), reducing HIV-risk behaviours (Barker, Ricardo, and Nascimento 2007; Dworkin, Treves-Kagan, and Lippman 2013) and, more widely, enabling men to become more engaged in supporting partners and children (Levtov et al. 2015). However, these reviews also highlight that working with men and boys does not always translate to changes in their behaviour, that changing attitudes about gender does not always lead to behaviours that support gender equality and that intervention effectiveness is dependent on the approaches used and the process and context of implementation (Barker, Ricardo, and Nascimento 2007; Dworkin, Treves-Kagan, and Lippman 2013; Jewkes, Flood, and Lang 2015). Given the growth in the number of programmes and interventions working with men and boys globally, research exploring the processes involved, the challenges, problems, limitations and politics of this kind of work is surprisingly limited. The ways in which women are and could be involved in this work, so as to support and not hinder efforts at changing masculinities, has also received limited attention. It was against this backdrop that this special issue of Culture, Health & Sexuality was conceptualised. A call for papers led to 55 abstracts being submitted for consideration; reflecting on these submissions provides us with an insight into some of the wider contemporary dynamics of the field of masculinities and how this special issue could contribute, potentially stimulating new conversations, reflections and debates. First, the geographical spread of research on this topic was highly skewed towards Africa and in particular, South Africa. In total, 21 abstracts were received based on research conducted in South Africa, and a further 19 were about Africa more widely. Beyond that, 5 abstracts were submitted drawing on work undertaken in Australia, 5 more from Asia, 2 from Europe, and 1 each from Canada, Mexico and the Caribbean. What does this suggest to us? First, it would be correct to acknowledge that this partly reflects existing networks and communities of research, which are reflected in our specific geographic locations as editors in South Africa and Australia, and that English is the primary language of the journal. Second, those writing on a country are not necessarily based there (although this was only the case in the minority of submissions). However the geographical focus of submissions does reflect something wider about the global production of knowledge on masculinities at this moment in the field of health and sexuality. It highlights that much of the recent research on masculinities has emerged in the context of the immediate needs and challenges faced in the global South, particularly those associated with violence and HIV (Shefer et al. this issue). In the early years of the HIV epidemic, the global response focused on communities’ urgent, practical needs and on advocacy and activism for structural and political change (Mbali 2013). Practitioners responding to the epidemic were often informed by debates in relation to Women in Development and then Gender and Development, but less space was allocated to reflection on how gender transformation efforts could contribute to this work (Jewkes et al. this issue). However, over the last 20 years, the often hard lessons of the epidemic have seen HIV researchers and practitioners in southern Africa shift their gaze towards gendered power, masculinities and men’s violence against women. Across the Atlantic, frustration at prevailing discourses about gender equality and the limited attention paid to the struggles of young Brazilian men gave rise to the highly influential work of Program H and subsequently the work of Promundo. In a very important sense, therefore, the global South has been central to the production of knowledge in the field of masculinities, even if the process has often been mediated by the agenda of academic and development partners in the global North (Epstein and Morrell 2012). Collectively, the papers of this special issue significantly upscale existing dialogue around the processes of engaging men and boys in gender transformative work. In the rest of this overview, we highlight a number of key themes we see emerging through the papers.

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