Sida Development Talks Stockholm, 16 th September 2013 Jerker Edstr öm

1. The ‘Male Order’ Development Encounter? Interrogating our approaches to ‘structural interventions’ on men, boys and gender in development Sida Development Talks Stockholm, 16th September 2013 Jerker Edström Research Fellow, IDS

2. Background • Share my reflections on some ideas emerging from a series of creative spaces which IDS and partners have co-organised over recent years: • ‘Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Personal’, international symposium ,Dakar 2007 • ‘Heteronormativity: Untying the Straight-jacket of Development’, Workshop, Cape Town 2010 • ‘Undressing Patriarchy: Redressing Inequities’, international symposium Brighton 2013 (last week!) • ‘Unlikely encounters’ – driven by enthusiasm for new thinking from diverse angles (rather than by larger institutional agendas) • ‘Unusual suspects’ – linking the men and masculinities field with feminists, queer perspectives and others on social justice • ‘Unconventional debates’ – informal dialogues, critical yet safe

3. So, to start... • As we have heard – a lot to learn about what seems to be working in engaging men and boys better in gender equality. • And, if we want to get ‘beyond individuals’ to consider adapting the ‘structural’ influences on their development, we need to: • see and engage men and boys in many different ways – • see many different kinds of men for multiple different reasons • work in alliance with and support of women’s struggles for equality and empowerment. • We need to get more sophisticated about various types of strategies in tandem at different levels and at scale. • But, it may be naive to think that it is mainly by changing the attitudes and behaviours of individual men that we can address the multiple roles of men and masculinities within social change (though that is also essential).

4. How to ‘think structural’ about men & boys in gender? • ‘Structural interventions’ have themselves become popular as the latest ‘Cadillac models’ for intervening to fix the problems generated by ‘men’s crises of masculinity’, usually ‘over there’... • On the positive side they encourage us to recognise ‘levels’ or ‘dimensions’ to the work and to recognise that we are all operating within social systems that need changing • (Yet often fall back on ‘composite strategies’ to change individuals - even if large numbers - rather than systems themselves) • On the negative, ‘structural models’ (e.g. of levels of context): • quickly get abstract and linear, • deal poorly with intersectionality of multiple axes of inequity • lend themselves to a sense of determinism • thus constrict unexpected aspects of agency and • leave the observer/intervener out of the structural dynamic itself.

5. Governmental Ecological / structural model Institutional (services) Communal (networks) Personal/interpersonal Individual/s

6. So how can we see the structural in a better way? • We must: • get far more sophisticated in thinking about social systems and social change (beyond multiple hegemonic and subordinate masculinities towards patriarchy in relation to classism, racism, homophobia etc. within social change) • In this we (as ‘men’) need to engage much more directly, honestly and critically with feminism and marginal analyses • If we are serious about structural change, we must dig deeper into what feminists like Nancy Fraser call the ‘deep structures’ of constraint (to women’s emancipation or gender equity) • I have drawn – and interconnected ideas into ‘four Ms’ of patriarchy from feminist theorists (Nancy Fraser, Andrea Cornwall and Alan Johnson), thinkers on power analysis (e.g. Veneclasen and Gaventa), as well as masculinities writers (Connell, Messerschmidt and Greig).

7. Four dimensions in which to undress patriarchy • Representational dimension; expose and dislocate Male centeredness – shine a light on the ‘unmarked male’ • Ideological dimension; take a stand against Male supremacy, taking seriously the deep history of the subordination of women. • Institutional dimension; name, give up, root out Male privilege resulting in multiple forms of individual and collective discrimination against women. • Epistemological dimension; decipher, hack, disrupt ‘Male order’, which provides the very language and syntax of patriarchal systems of knowledge and power (its’ underlying two-dimensional binary-code operating system).

8. Male centeredness • We must take seriously feminists call to reveal and shine a light on the ‘unmarked male’ in society, with its insidious effect of women’s marginalisation • This involves seeing men and boys more clearly, as complex, diverse and changing, but also seeing this in relation to women and other genders.. • The move from WID and ‘sex roles’ to GAD and multiple (dynamic and conflicted) masculinities, provided fertile ground for beginning to chart and see men in multiple contextualised positionalities. • Developments in SRH, HIV have been instrumental for progress in this. (and research like IMAGES to put some reality to men and women’s relations and realities • Yet, discourse on Men and Boys risks homogenising men into generalised – or ideal – ‘types’

9. Male supremacy • We must acknowledge women’s calls for redress and claims against patriarchy and its ideology of subordination of women. • Men we must take some accountability here, even if we are also ‘products of the system’: We must speak out to resist and oppose the violence of ‘male supremacy’, with its associated noxious misogyny and homophobia in all its forms • Recent advances in attention to men in S/GBV prevention is encouraging in this aspect and there is some recognition of the importance of a shift beyond “VAWG”, seeing men as both victims and perpetrators. • Yet, approaches to SGBV tend to downstream the issue to one pathologised men in crises, without sophisticated ways of treating this violence as truly structural • This can also depoliticise the ideological issue.

11. Male privilege •  Let’s listen to the clear feminist call for redistribution and the elimination of multiple forms of discrimination against women. • Patriarchy doesn’t benefit all men equally and even harms many men, but the structural inequities privileging men are deeply entrenched institutionally. • Patriarchal dividends fall to both women and men, depending on how the intersectional pincer movements of different axes of inequity cut them in or out, but a deeper analysis of patriarchal systems of power shines a light on how such hegemonic forces secure consent and collaboration in unequal gender orders.  • The recent interest in ‘structural drivers’ in health, gender and masculinities is encouraging, but let’s • Resist too simplistic ‘ecological model’ of deterministic levels • And challenge ourselves to see our being ‘part of’ the power structures we are aiming to change. 

12. RLP training at National Police school, on human rights and the law on sexual offences, August 2012

13. ‘Male order’ • Respond to feminist thinkers’ call to excavate, interrogate and undermine the deep sub-structures of constraint to gender equality, which shape and give meanings to our social lives. • I would like us to develop this concept drawing on ideas of patriarchal systems’ obsession with control and order (A Johnson), “the masculinity of hegemony” (A Greig) and gendering knowledge-power (Foucault). • (What I call) ‘Male order’ provides the very syntax of patriarchal systems of knowledge and power and are peculiarly ‘masculine’: • reductive, binary, homogenising (& heteronormative), focused on control, order, expansion, linear, target-driven results etc. • There have been recent critiques of neoliberal, methodological individualism and reductive target-driven approaches in development, as well as a ‘push back’ from activists, movements and theorists.

15. Some possible ways forward • Undressing patriarchal power systems in multiple dimensions. • Seeing patriarchal power systems in different symbiotic spheres and sectors (military complex linked to global corporate capitalism, multilateral aid structures and/or shifting World religions) • Challenging powerful – and institutionalised – notions ‘what kind of knowledge/evidence counts’ and ‘who counts evidence?’ • Exploring the intersections and symbiosis between patriarchy and other axes of inequality, building alliances of common interest • Making the work explicitly political as well as personal I.e. even if – for different reasons - we can’t all declare ourselves ‘feminists’, I believe that to work credibly with men and boys for gender equality we can’t sit on the fence and must elaborate and declare a stand on Patriarchy

16. Tusen Tack!

17. Resources • Greig, A. with Edström, J. (2012) Mobilising Men in Practice: Challenging Sexual and gender-based violence in institutional settings - Tools, Stories, Lessons, Institute of Development Studies http://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/MobilisingMeninPracticeonlinefinal.pdf • Cornwall, A., Edström, J. and Greig, A. (eds.) (2011), Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities, Zed Books: Londonwww.ids.ac.uk/idspublication/men-and-development-politicizing-masculinities • Greig, A. and Esplen, E. (2008) Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Personal,Report of an International Symposium held in Dakar, October 2007, Institute of Development Studies http://www.ids.ac.uk/files/dmfile/Masculinities.pdf