Masculinities Matter!

Men appear to be missing from much gender and development policy. However, emerging critiques suggest the need to pay more attention to understanding men and masculinities, and to analysing the social relationships between men and women.This book considers the case for a focus on men in gender and development, including arguments based on equality and social justice, the specific gendered vulnerabilities of men, the emergence of a crisis of masculinity and the need to include men in development as partners for strategic change. Incorporating men into gender and development requires us to reconsider some of the theories and concepts which underlie policies. This book addresses a variety of such concepts and debates including the links between modernization, development and gender, whether feminist analytical frameworks are appropriate for incorporating men and their concerns, how useful the concept of hegemonic masculinity is in understanding different cultural conceptions of manliness, and the need to find ways of combining concern with micro level and private social relations with an analysis of macro level trends and structures. Chapters in this book draw on experience from a variety of geographical areas and different development projects and processes to analyse men and masculinities and to draw out implications for policy and practice. Subjects covered include working with children and in schools, impacting upon sexual health and intimate relations, and working with men in women‘s groups. Other chapters look at gender relations and masculinities in situations of violence and conflict, the role of the state and ideologies of nationalism in shaping masculinities, and the interlinking of gender relations with race and class. Overall they illustrate the complexity of economic and social relationships shaped by local, national and international processes, and the importance of incorporating an understanding of men and masculinities into gender and development.

Frances Cleaver is a senior lecturer at the Bradford Centre for International Development. Her research, mainly in central and southern Africa includes investigating the gendered nature of participation in local institutions and social capital. From 1998-2000 she coordinated an ESRC Seminar Series on Men, Masculinities and Gender relations in Development.