The EU Mutual Learning Programme in Gender Equality - The role of men and boys in advancing gender equality and breaking gender stereotypes – Ireland, 16-17 February 2023

The Mutual Learning Seminar, held in Dublin on 16-17 February 2023, discussed good practices from Ireland and Austria on the role of men and boys in advancing gender equality and breaking gender stereotypes. Government representatives and gender experts from 14 EU Member States participated in the seminar. The seminar was an excellent opportunity to discuss new thinking and innovative approaches to involving men and boys in transforming gender norms.

The Irish good practice discussed an innovative exercise in data collection on gender norms and stereotypes to assess attitudinal change and inform gender equality policy developments. The presentation of the 6th Statistical Spotlight, based on 10 indicators of masculinities under the OECD Man Enough framework, revealed new and sometimes contradictory attitudes and insights, as well as significant data gaps, particularly in the private sphere. Overall, the practice represents an extremely valuable tool to measure progress in gender equality and show the tensions between positive masculine norms change and the persistence of retrograde norms and practices on leadership, care and gender-based violence.

The Austrian good practices discussed six projects funded by the Ministry of Social Affairs, Health, Care and Consumer Protection, which are focussed on three goals: to enable men to seek help, to promote caring masculinities and to prevent gender-based violence by calling on men to intervene when they witness violence. One project addresses the prevention of violence against women in local neighbourhoods through community organising aimed at engaging men and women in violence prevention. The other five programmes feature the implementation of perpetrator counselling programmes and a helpline, workshops with boys and male youth to explore positive masculinities and to discuss the benefits of caring masculinities, the implementation of Boys’ Days and a public awareness raising campaign targeted to men as witnesses of violence and to encourage their civic courage to intervene to disrupt and prevent violence.

The seminar discussions enabled participants to share and learn from further good practices at the national level and to discuss the challenges and opportunities involved in working with men and boys in advancing gender equality. It was stressed how essential it was to involve men and boys in transforming gender norms and to promote role models in caring masculinities. Participants highlighted the importance of addressing gender norms change at the individual level and through gender equality policies that address institutional and structural change. Furthermore, transformational change requires strong policies, sustained funding, and cross-sectoral approaches. Programmes should also be implemented at local levels through sustainable funding. This is important in the context of the backlash against gender equality and the need to show the benefits of gender equality for women and men in promoting cohesion and integration. In this respect, participants also concluded that awareness-raising and information campaigns should promote positive messaging with an emphasis on the win-win of gender equality. This means shifting from messaging around toxic masculinity to men’s roles in transformational social change. Overall, participants concluded that the seminar had enabled them to learn from and reflect on new and innovative ways to address gender norms and stereotypes, including implementing new data collection based on the OECD indicators.