‘Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Personal’
An international symposium linking lessons from HIV, sexuality and reproductive health with other areas for rethinking AIDS, gender and development; 15-18th October, 2007, Dakar
ARE MEN INTERESTED IN ENGAGING IN THE STRUGGLE FOR GENDER JUSTICE AND BROADER SOCIAL CHANGEOR WHAT WOULD MAKE THEM INTERESTED?
Margrethe Silberschmidt
Institute of Public Health, University of Copenhagen
Introduction
A central premise of the gender and development discourse since the 1970’s has been the way in which men exercise power over and dominate women, resulting in inequities, discrimination, and the subordination of women. This has been documented over and over in thousands of researches, reports and conferences etc. during the last three decades (cf. Moghadam, 2005)[1]. Following this, and according to gender advocates, men have been the main beneficiaries of development. This has led to stereotyped notions crystallised in the general notion of men as the problem and women as the victim. While, virtually all the main actors in international development subscribe to this basic premise (Correia and Bannon, 2007) – it has so far mainly been reflected in the gender and development discourse in particular in relation to the HIV/AIDS epidemic - and not in mainstream development. However, while it is recognised that many men and boys are changing how they view women, nonetheless, this change goes hand in hand with traditional gender hierarchies. Many men – particularly young men – are accepting change – paradoxically, thoughat the same time hanging on to traditional views (ibid: 255).
Consequently, the time for men-streaming development has come whether it happens directly within the gender and development model or through more indirect channels’(ibid:259). But, as also argued, if gender is to be reflected in mainstream development – it better be without stereotyped notions of gender, and not by sidestepping the uncomfortable and complex issues associated with changing gender relations between women and men.This raises a number of questions. How to men-stream development? How to move men from obstacles to collaborators? In short, how to motivate menfor gender justice and broader social change?
According to the above authors ‘The impetus to address men’s gender issues in development is unlikely to come from the gender community. The political capital invested in gender in terms of women and the mistrust and fear over male dominance will likely be too much to overcome. And while interest in men’s issues will continue in specialised areas such as HIV/AIDS and reproductive health, actions are likely to remain marginal and tentative. Rather, the interest, drive, and energy to address men as men will likely come from the broader-based social development community with its focus on social exclusion and conflict and violence prevention – or even the security sector in its quest to understand the root causes of conflict, violence , and terrorism’ (ibid:259). That remains to be seen.
According to the IDS symposium rationale (2007), as work on men and masculinities in development has failed to engage with efforts to change the institutions that sustain inequitable gender and sex orders, there is a need ‘to generate new thinking, new alliances and new possibilities for informing and inspiring a greater engagement by men in the struggle for gender justice and broader social change’. This raises another set of questions, first of all: are men interested in engaging in the struggle for gender justice and broader social change?If not – what is needed then to motivate men? What about gender training and gender balanced, men-inclusive approaches assuggested by Chant and Guttmann (2000)? Or will men rather be motivated f. ex. through media campaigns, initiatives addressing men’s needs and creative programmes (mostly in the fields of HIV/AIDS) along with more men-friendly policies as suggested by Barker (2007) and Barker and Ricardo (2005)[2]? However, such approaches, campaigns and programmes by international actors seem to address individual behaviour change and are based on moralistic principles – as has been seen in unsuccessful attempts to make halt to the HIV/AIDS epidemic (cf. Heald, 2002 and many more)[3]. Or will the answer be ‘gender mainstreaming funds’ which target men as suggested by Correia and Bannon (2007:257)?
Based on my own research over the past 20 yearsI seriously doubt that poor, frustrated men with no access to income generating activities, who are not respected by their wives because of lack of financial support, who are blamed for their extramarital activities, and whose self-esteem and masculinityare at stake, would be interested in engaging in the struggle for gender justice and broader social change. This would require profound personal transformation.But what would really interest them is getting access to income generating activities that would enable them to provide for their families (Silberschmidt, 2005, 2004, 2001). That requires much more than individual change, or institutional changes for that matter. It is not enough only to address the ‘superstructures’. There is a need to address and stabilise the economic base which, I shall argue (along with good old Marx[4]), is a determinant in the last instance. And this is a much bigger and much more difficult issue – which neither the international and donor community nor the broader-based social development community with its focus on social exclusion and conflict and violence prevention or even the security sector (cf. above) may be ready to embark on. Gender equality will create development.[5]Gender inequality, it is agreed, is a serious obstacle to sustainable poverty reduction and socio-economic development. But perhaps it is the other way around: the obstacle to gender equality is poverty and lack of socio-economic development.
Socio-economic transformation is difficult to achieve – it requires that ‘we break with business as usual’ – (cf. Kofi Annan, 2005). Who is interested? On the other hand, what other alternatives are there, when it is increasingly agreed that ‘The first prerequisite for being a man is the ability to work and achieve financial independence’ (Correa and Bannon, 2007:246)? ‘Men’s social recognition, and their sense of manhood, suffers when they lack work’ (Barker and Ricardo, 2005). And ‘economically unviable’ husbands feel emasculated and are belittled by their wives (Cornwall, 2003). Work and access to income generating activities give social value – and self esteem. No work and no cash result in lack of social value, no self esteem – not to mention - no sex (Silberschmidt, 2001, 2004, 2005, 2007). While the centrality of men’s income earning power in constructions of masculinity cannot be emphasised enough –it shouldnot be neglected that most notions of masculinity are closely associated with virility, sexuality, potency, fertility and male honour. Consequently, and as argued below, when men’s income earning powers are undermined, male sexuality, potency and control over women seem to become central for masculinity (ibid). This offers new and crucial insights into issues of gender and sexuality, and has extensive theoretical and policy implications in terms of the HIV/AIDS epidemic (Silberschmidt, 2005).
In the following I shall firstdraw on research which attempts to understand men and masculinities in Africa. Second, I shall draw on my own findings fromEast Africa (rural Kenya, urbanTanzania(Dar es Salaam), and urban Uganda (Kampala)) which clearly demonstrate the impact of poverty and lack of access to income generating activities on masculinity and sexuality. It also demonstrates that personal transformation – even if it could lead to personal benefits – is not a primary interest among men – whereas socio-economic change and access to income generating activities is.
Reflections on Men, Masculinities, Gender and Poverty in Rural and Urban East Africa
In order to understand masculinities in Africa, Lahouchine and Morrell (2005) suggest three steps: first, a geopolitical step which does not assume homogeneity or uniformity but in spite of vast differences, diversity and inequality does recognise particular experiences of colonialism and development that have had profound effect on the continent’s people; a second step that involves theories of masculinities, identifies power inequalities among men, and recognises that all men do not have the same amount of power, opportunities or life trajectories; a third step that discusses and analyses gender in Africa.
The geopolitical step
Very few attempts have been made to analyse in gendered terms how the legacy of colonialisation, globalisation and race have impacted on men’s lives, and produced complex forms of male identity. As a result of the European colonisation of Africa, men and women were confronted with collapsing traditional structures, the emergence of new unstable situations, new social roles, contradicting norms and values, and economic hardship. While research on women since the 1970s accumulated deep insights into the implications of socio-economic change, poverty and increasing workloads for African women, similar insights on men were not documented. In attempts to make African women’s work visible some analyses slipped into representing African rural men as not doing very much at all (Whitehead, 2000). Important observations, though, by Boserup (1980) that the change in women's work has been less radical than that in men's work were never pursued.
Throughout sub-Saharan Africa, missionaries and labour recruiters were catalysts for transforming men’s gendered relationships and identities. Missionaries and administrators worked through churches, schools, and workplaces, propagating their own ideal of domesticity and men’s place in households and marriages. As they intervened in politics, religion, legal systems, agricultural regimes, and labour markets, European actors worked to remake men. Of particular importance was when colonial administrators encouraged cash cropping and labour migration. This had profound implications for gendered identities and relationships, and men became less able to control their wives than previously (Cornwall, 2005; Lindsey and Miescher, 2003; Silberschmidt, 2001). The shaping of different colonial subjectivities and the creation of the male breadwinner with men as financial providers in their families overlooked the fact that when men were forced to migrate, when men’s areas of responsibility were eliminated by the colonial powers, or when men’s economic opportunities diminished, women became heads of household and earned money as well. Men’s changed role – or lack of role - had strong impact on their masculinity, sexuality and the relations between genders.
Theories of masculinities
Masculinity is composed of elements, identities and behaviours that are not always coherent. They may be competing, contradictory, and mutually undermining, and may have multiple and ambiguous meanings according to context, culture and time (Connell, 1995). Ideologies of masculinity like those of femininity are culturally and historically constructed, their meanings continually contested and always in the process of being renegotiated in the context of existing power relations. While Western gender theories should be handled with care and perhaps revised in order to understand gender relations and categories of men and masculinity in Africa, all men do have access to the ‘patriarchal dividend’ i.e. the power that being a man gives them to choose and exercise power over women and sometimes over other men as well. Connell’s distinction (ibid) between hegemonic and subordinate masculinities opens up for the possibility of examining subordinate masculinities and the ways in which some men may experience stigmatisation and marginalisation. While in the West, this examination has mainly focused on men stigmatised because of their sexual orientation, in Africa the psychological and economic effects of colonialisation on men and masculinity have occupied the centre stage. This has revealed that while men are the beneficiaries where gender inequities exist, not all men benefit to the same degree – indeed some men do not benefit at all. Many pay heavy costs for the general supremacy of men in a patriarchal gender order and ignore their own vulnerability. Consequently, theories of patriarchy - which tend to consign men to stereotypical gender roles (as victimisers and exploiters of women) - ignore men as gendered subjects and are neither sensitive nor appropriate tools for analysis. From a feminist point of view, and as mentioned above, the assertion that men are also victims is accused of muting the power of the analysis of women’s oppression.
Gender in present Africa
While colonialism had gendered implications and has been perceived as an assault on African masculinity, African women and men were not simply subjects created by colonial gender discourse. They were actively engaged in reconfiguring their own identities. However, the contradictions that emerged during the colonial era between the realities of women’s contributions to household provisioning and the inability of most men to sustain dependent wives still continues today. Therefore, defining gender roles and relations in terms of notions of patriarchy or the different functions that men and women fulfil in response to gender norms and expectations, fails to recognise the complexity, constant changing and negotiated nature of contemporary gender roles and relations.
As my own research reveals, poverty in most rural and urban contexts is massive and has caused economic hardship for both men and women. Both the rural and urban settings – in spite of fundamental differences – were characterised by the same main features: poverty, social instability, unemployment, lack of access to income – not to mention deteriorating sexual and reproductive health. The majority of the inhabitants in the urban areas lived in low income/slum areas, cramped conditions and little privacy, and with inadequate access to basic facilities. Men were expected to be the providers of the needs of the household, however only a few had regular income, and even if they had, all complained that it was far from enough to support their family. The majority of women referred to themselves as housewives with no income – though many were involved in petty trade.
Lack of husbands’ economic support, extramarital partners (by women and men), mistrust, and conflicts, lack of respect as well as lack of dialogue between genders were common features. Communication was mainly through quarrelling because of men’s lack of economic support:’Men do not support their families’, ‘men do not care about their children’, ‘men cannot be trusted’, ‘all men have two heads, when one of them is working the other is switched off’. Men were constantly confronted with their inability to provide for the household. They were bitter and would in turn argue ‘women marry money – not a person’.Thus, structurally subordinate, women have aggressively responded to the challenges of economic hardship. In this process, they have started to challenge men, their social value, and their position as heads of household. This is a serious threat to a man’s honour, reputation and masculinity, and conflicts of interests embedded in gender relations become more visible. Although the main axis of patriarchal power is still the overall subordination of women, the material conditions have often undermined the normative order of patriarchy. With a majority of men being left with a patriarchal ideology bereft of its legitimising activities, men’s authority has come under threat and so have their identity, and sense of self-esteem. For patriarchy does not mean that men have only privileges. Men also have many responsibilities. The key and the irony of the patriarchal system reside precisely in the fact that male authority has a material base while male responsibility is normatively constituted. This has made men’s roles and identities confusing and contradictory(Silberschmidt, 2001).
However, persisting patriarchal structures and stereotyped notions of gender hide the increasing disempowerment of many men in both rural and urban contexts (ibid). Caught between discursive domains that create variant images of masculinity, from responsible provider to insatiable lover, becoming a man is fraught with complications. Accused by wives of being useless and passed over by girlfriends for lacking the economic potency to satisfy them, men find themselves in a position of diminishing control (Silberschmidt, 2005; Lindsey and Miescher, 2003; Silberschmidt, 2001). With the close link between masculinity and sexuality, male identity and self-esteem seem to have become increasingly linked to sexuality and sexual manifestations – often acted out in violence and sexual aggressiveness. Consequently, multi partnered/extra-marital and casual sexual relations often seem to become fundamental to a process of restoring male self-esteem (Silberschmidt, 2005, 2001). My interviews with both young as well as older men indicate that a man's need for sexual/extramarital partners is particularly urgent 'when a man has lost control over his household and is humiliated by his wife', and 'when a man's ego has been hurt'. Then 'he needs peace on his mind'; 'he needs to be comforted'. An extramarital partner is like a spare tire, men argue. Alcohol consumption has become a major activity and also a major problem. Men increasingly seek psychiatric help. Advertisements in the local newspapers offer to assist men not only with problems of depressions but also with problems of impotence.