Social Science - Sociology Week14 assignment

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International Journal of Care and Caring • vol 2 • no 3 • 425–31 • © Policy Press 2018

Print ISSN 2397-8821 • Online ISSN 2397-883X • https://doi.org/10.1332/239788218X15351945466012

debates and issues SPECIAL ISSUE • The care ethics moment: International innovations

Engaging men as fathers and caregivers: an entry point to advancing women’s

empowerment and rights

Joni van de Sand, [email protected] Laxman Belbase

Sinéad Nolan MenEngage Global Alliance, UK

Engaging men and boys to do unpaid care work is key to achieving gender justice. This article argues that caregiving programmes with men can be effective and serve as an entry point to engage men as allies for feminist agendas. There is a need to increase the uptake and scale-up of such initiatives, while ensuring quality, local contextualisation and ownership, and full accountability to women and girls. Furthermore, such programmes must be connected with efforts to advance women’s economic empowerment and rights, challenge social norms around caregiving, transform institutions, and be combined with progressive national policies to recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work.

key words masculinities • engaging men and boys • unpaid care • gender equality

To cite this article: van de Sand, J., Belbase, L. and Nolan, S. (2018) ‘Engaging men as fathers and caregivers: an entry point to advancing women’s empowerment and right’, International Journal

of Care and Caring, 2(3): 425–31, DOI: 10.1332/239788218X15351945466012

Introduction

“My attitudes toward my daughter and son have changed. Because our society is still very patriarchal, violent and sexist towards women and girls, [my peers] make fun of me for supporting my wife at home, taking care of our children and engaging in household chores. But I don’t care as I know this is the right thing to do and it will ultimately bring happiness, peace and prosperity to the family.” (Mr Ram Kumar, father from a rural village in Kapilvastu, Nepal, and participant in the ‘Positive Fatherhood for Child Care and Gender Equality’ project, Save the Children Nepal)

“He doesn’t drink and make noise anymore. He has become a good example for our neighbourhood. We encourage our sons and husbands to be like him, engaging and supporting their wife and daughters with household works, and taking care of their children and mother. He is mostly at home

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doing household work, supporting his wife, supporting children with their homework and is less aggressive with his family members. We don’t see him strolling around the village anymore. He is very different now from the way he was before, and from most of the other men.” (Ms Dashiya Tharu, Ram Kumar’s neighbour)

Ram Kumar’s transformation is one example, among many, of the promising changes that have started to emerge among men who are part of fatherhood and caring programmes. In recent years, initiatives that seek to engage men as active, gender- sensitive, non-violent fathers and caregivers have been developed in diverse contexts around the world. Such programmes are an important means of encouraging men to take on their fair share of caring and domestic work, and engaging them as allies for gender equality. However, efforts to engage individual men in caring must be embedded in national strategies to recognise, reduce and redistribute unpaid care work (as well as paid care work), and combined with a range of progressive policies that support women’s economic empowerment, rights and gender justice.

Unpaid care has only gained visibility in international policy in recent years, despite the fact that the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action, the outcome of the 1995 World Conference on Women, called for the recognition and redistribution of unpaid care. The value of unpaid household and care work is increasingly being recognised, not just for children and family members, but also for the long-term health of societies and economies. As men’s involvement in caring gains international attention, the work of the MenEngage Alliance in promoting gender equality by engaging men and boys and transforming masculinities is becoming increasingly relevant.

As numerous programmes to engage men in fatherhood and caring emerge, a number of critical ethical considerations become important:

• How do we connect programmes that engage individual men with efforts to challenge stereotypical social norms around caring, and transform systems and institutions towards the recognition, reduction and redistribution of unpaid care work?

• How do we increase the uptake and scale-up of such initiatives, while ensuring quality, local contextualisation and ownership?

• How do we ensure that these programmes engaging men are accountable and meaningfully contribute to women’s economic empowerment, women’s rights and gender justice?

The MenEngage Alliance

The MenEngage Alliance is an international network of civil society organisations that implement, research and advocate for gender-transformative approaches to engaging men and boys towards women’s rights and gender justice. The Alliance currently has over 700 member organisations across 70 countries worldwide and is organised in country- and regional-level networks. In partnership with women’s rights and gender justice activists and organisations, the Alliance seeks to add value to existing initiatives by exploring how transforming patriarchal masculinities and engaging men and boys can contribute

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to the joint objectives set by feminist and social justice movements. The work brings a men-and-masculinities lens to initiatives that seek to reduce gender-based violence and discrimination, advance sexual and reproductive health and rights for all, redistribute unpaid care work, and transform militarised masculinities in order to achieve peace and security.

MenEngage Alliance members use a wide range of strategies to engage men and boys, including direct programming, community mobilisation, public awareness campaigns and policy advocacy. At the global level, the Alliance seeks to strengthen the capacity of civil society organisations and activists to implement gender-transformative approaches to engage men and boys. The Alliance supports network building by creating online and in- person spaces to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and promising practices. The Alliance also engages in policy advocacy, at national levels as well as at the United Nations, with governments and service providers to promote progressive policies that include a men- and-masculinities perspective in order to advance women’s rights and gender equality. Another core role of the Alliance at the global level is strengthening accountable practices in the field of engaging men and boys in order to ensure that this work supports and adds value to the efforts of women’s rights and other social justice organisations.

The gendered ‘burden’ of caring

There is no country in the world where women’s rights are fully realised and where gender equality has been achieved. Inequalities between and among women, men and people of diverse gender identities are manifested in many ways, not least in the division of labour, both unpaid and paid. Feminist economists and social policy scholars have produced rigorous evidence for decades confirming that, across the world, burdensome aspects of care work fall disproportionately on women and girls. This comes as no surprise. However, the scale of that inequality is staggering – throughout the world, women and girls continue to spend two to 10 times more time than men and boys on unpaid care work, including domestic work, water and firewood collection, and caring for children and those who are ill or old (Donald and Moussié, 2016; Heilman et al, 2016). Even in countries like Sweden and The Netherlands, known for being relatively gender-equal, women still do 20% to 60% more unpaid care work than men (World Bank, 2015). In the US, national data show that women with children under the age of six spend just over an hour a day on hands-on care, while men do only about 50% of that amount (World Bank, 2015).

This unequal division of care work acts as one of the primary barriers to women’s economic empowerment (and empowerment in general) and relates to several key women’s rights violations worldwide. Women make up 40% of the global formal workforce yet, on average, earn 24% less than men (Levtov et al, 2015). At the current rate of progress, the International Labour Office (ILO, 2011) estimates that it will take another 75 years before women and men achieve equal pay for equal work – and that is probably an optimistic calculation. Even when women have paid employment, they still perform most of the domestic tasks, including household maintenance and childcare, leading to a ‘double-burden’ on women; it is an unequal distribution of unpaid care that limits women’s and girls’ time for other pursuits, such as education,

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career development or political participation, relegating them to low-income and insecure employment (Ferrant et al, 2014). In addition, existing social norms and expectations often force women to take on stereotypical positions related to care work, such as domestic workers, teachers, nurses and so on – positions that are crucial to society yet generally undervalued and underpaid. As populations around the world grow and age, the care labour market will only increase in importance. It is imperative, therefore, that societies begin to adapt to these new circumstances. Care work needs to be better recognised: it is necessary for all societies to function, has tremendous value and is a source of fulfilment to many. The inequalities in who pays for and provides care require urgent realignment in a manner that will bolster women’s rights, generate jobs and make societies more just and equal.

Engaging men in fatherhood and caregiving

Achieving gender equality will mean that men and boys take on 50% of the world’s paid and unpaid care work. This will require that boys and men, from early childhood, are socialised in ways that seek to transform the gendered division of care work specifically, and the gendered division of labour in general. In order to advance women’s economic empowerment and gender justice, it is essential to examine and challenge the stereotypical notions of masculinities that are currently inhibiting men’s care work, and to engage men and boys to take up their share of caring and domestic work.

Equal sharing of responsibilities is the right thing to do – it supports women’s human rights and gender justice. Research has shown that positive male parental involvement leads to improved maternal and child health, as well as stronger and more equitable partner relations, and increases the likelihood that sons will grow up to be more gender-equitable and involved fathers, and that daughters will be empowered (Ferrant et al, 2014). In addition, male engagement in caring has benefits for men themselves, and research from the State of the World’s Fathers reports shows that men who are more active in caring roles are healthier, happier and less violent (Levtov et al, 2015).

The MenEngage Alliance and the transformation of gender norms

The MenEngage Alliance’s member organisations implement programmes to engage individual men in caring, such as fatherhood-preparation courses that focus on men’s roles in the lives of children and attitudes towards caring, addressing fathers’ reported feelings of being unprepared for caring; and helping them see the benefits of greater participation. The Alliance and its members also work to transform social norms around caring more broadly and increase recognition of the value of unpaid care, as well as the participation of women in paid work. Through public campaigns and community engagement, the Alliance works to challenge people’s deeply entrenched attitudes, behaviours and stereotypes around masculinity and caring. It also aims to transform the understanding of boys’ and men’s roles in caring, including in professional care work, which is often perceived as low value ‘women’s work’.

Much of the work on fatherhood and caring by Alliance members is done through the MenCare campaign (see: www.men-care.org), active in more than 45 countries, which promotes men’s involvement as equitable, non-violent fathers and carers. The

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MenEngage Alliance and its members, in particular, through the ‘MenEngage Men and Fatherhood Working Group’, provided foundational support to develop and initiate the MenCare campaign. Through innovative programming, public awareness campaigns and policy advocacy, MenCare engages men at all levels – individuals, communities, institutions and policymakers. Since its inception in 2011, the campaign has reached millions of people with positive messaging that challenges stereotypical expectations around masculinity and caring. MenCare publishes the ‘State of the World’s Fathers’ reports (see: https://sowf.men-care.org/), which provide a global view of the state of men’s contributions to parenting and caring (with issues in 2015 and 2017, and forthcoming in 2019). MenCare is co-ordinated by Promundo and Sonke Gender Justice, both members of the Alliance, in collaboration with a steering committee that includes Save the Children Sweden, Oxfam GB, Plan Sweden and the MenEngage Alliance.

For the MenEngage Alliance, accountability to women’s rights and other social justice movements and feminist principles is key in everything it does, including its work on engaging men in unpaid care. Feminist activists have been working on these issues for decades, and in order to ensure accountability to them, it is imperative that programmes and initiatives to engage men in caring are informed by feminist and rights-based approaches. The Alliance works to promote such accountable practices among its members and partners, and to ensure that programmes are implemented in ways that further strengthen the feminist agenda. The Alliance acknowledges that fatherhood is a crucial entry point to reach men but argues that it should not stop there. Rather, programmes supporting men to become more engaged fathers and partners can serve as a starting point to explore more difficult conversations about masculinities and men’s roles in gender inequality, including about challenging topics such as gender-based violence and sexual and reproductive health and rights. The Alliance supports, and stands in solidarity with, women’s rights activists’ call for maternity leave, where there is a lack of proper parental leave for women, and to mobilise members to support this call. It also aims to mobilise men and boys in changing attitudes that reinforce the gendered division of labour, and to reduce the disproportionate share of care work, by taking responsibility for caring for the mother or partner and child (including pregnancy, prenatal and post-natal care). By engaging men in fatherhood programmes, the Alliance seeks to mobilise them as allies in the struggle for women’s rights and gender justice for all.

In order to change the attitudes and behaviours of men, and to create the large-scale societal transformations that are needed, programmes to more equally distribute care work need to be scaled up and adopted by governments and service providers. The MenEngage Alliance supports, and advocates, the upscaling of this work. It is important, however, that upscaling does not simply mean copying ‘successful’ initiatives across from one context to another, but that approaches are contextualised to reflect local realities. To do this, initiatives to engage men and boys in caring must be implemented in partnership with women’s rights organisations and networks working in the local context. We believe that upscaling is not merely about governments taking up these programmes, but also means supporting local organisations and building relationships and partnerships among a range of relevant stakeholders. For any societal change to happen, actors at all levels are needed – and have distinct roles: governments serve to meet the needs of their citizens, and civil

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society can, if needed, serve as a watchdog to ensure that services and policies are well developed and delivered.

Transforming the care economy for gender justice

To achieve the necessary transformative impact, work with individual men must be accompanied by efforts to challenge structural barriers to the equitable division of caring. These include factors that inhibit women from developing paid careers at the same pace and quality as men can – the infamous ‘sticky floors’ and ‘glass ceilings’ – which often result in women doing more unpaid care. On 1 January 2018, Iceland stepped up its efforts to close the gender pay gap by introducing fines for companies with 25 or more employees that lack government certification for their equal-pay policies. Its latest step to ensure that men are not paid more than women for the same work followed a 2017 amendment to the country’s Gender Equality Act 10/2008 (Government of Iceland, 2018). In doing so, it aims to remove one structural barrier: with women and men earning the same, the decision on who stays at home to care becomes a more level playing field. Insufficient public services, infrastructure and social protection policies are leading causes of the unequal division of paid and unpaid labour. Progressive policies, such as (paid) parental leave, can help even out this division, and when these include paternity leave, they encourage men’s caring, help transform deeply rooted societal attitudes to caring and promote greater equality in the household, workplace and society as a whole.

It is our observation that existing workplace cultures, driven by the global capitalist economy (Banks, 2006), lead to a system that values growth and production more than caring for people and the environment. There is an urgent need to educate and mobilise men and boys as critical citizens and advocates, alongside women and girls and people of diverse gender identities, in order to transform the systems and institutions around them and support policy change, including on unpaid care. Through advocacy work at country, regional and global levels, the MenEngage Alliance promotes public policies and services that support the redistribution of care work, from women to men, and from citizens to the state. This collective advocacy aims to challenge restrictive government agendas around the world and hold them to account, including by normalising a sense of collective responsibility for care.

In 2015, United Nations member states adopted the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Goal 5.4 (United Nations, 2015) calls for recognising, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work – a measure long proposed by feminist economists and gender-equality advocates. The question now is how to meet this objective. Beyond services, achieving the SDG targets will require policy change and shifts in priorities. It is imperative that governments implement relevant policies to achieve Goal 5.4, as well as gender justice more broadly, and that such interventions are viewed as an investment, not a cost.

Examples of specific national policy solutions promoted by the MenEngage Alliance include:

• promoting public services and social protection policies that support families and enable the redistribution of care work within households;

• redistributing care work from poorer households to the state by financing, providing and regulating care services;

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• promoting more progressive parental leave policies that are well paid, non- transferable and adequate in length;

• increasing the government uptake of programmes and campaigns that seek to transform social norms around caring, including through institutionalising such initiatives within education and health-care systems; and

• promoting family-friendly policies in the private sector, including parental leave, childcare and flexible working arrangements.

Conclusion

Engaging men and boys to take on 50% of unpaid care work is a vital component in achieving the goal of recognising, reducing and redistributing unpaid care and addressing the deep-seated social and gender norms that perpetuate inequalities, discrimination and violence. Increased global attention and recognition of men’s roles and responsibilities in unpaid care is a positive development, and promising initiatives have emerged to engage men as active and equitable fathers and carers. However, achieving the ultimate goal of gender equality in the provision of care will be a challenge. It will require a fundamental shift in how caring, gender norms and masculinities are perceived, and will depend on efforts at all levels of society, from individual efforts with men and boys, to the adoption of progressive policies and legislation, to the transformation of institutions. Crucially, it will require both government support and action and meaningful partnerships with local civil society organisations, including those that are women-centred and women-led, to ensure that initiatives to engage men in caring contribute to the overall goal of a more gender-just world for all.

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Government of Iceland (2018) News item, www.government.is/news/ article/?newsid=39d0a25d-f139-11e7-9423-005056bc530c

Heilman, B., Cole, G., Matos, K., Hassink, A., Mincy, R. and Barker, G. (2016) State of America’s fathers: A MenCare advocacy publication: Executive summary, Washington, DC: MenCare Campaign and Promundo.

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Levtov, R., Gaag, N., Greene, M., Kaufman, M. and Barker, G. (2015) State of the world’s fathers: A MenCare advocacy publication, Washington, DC: Promundo, Rutgers, Save the Children, Sonke Gender Justice and MenEngage Alliance.

United Nations (2015) Sustainable Development Goal 5, Sustainable Development Knowledge Platform, https://sustainabledevelopment.un.org/sdg5#targets

World Bank (2015) Proportion of time spent on unpaid domestic and care work, female % of 24 hour day, World Bank, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SG.TIM. UWRK.FE?view=map