Working with men and boys to prevent gender-based violence: Principles, lessons learned, and ways forward

In spite of tremendous progress toward including gender equality as a global goal—included in numerous UN conventions and the Millennium Development Goals—much progress remains to be made. Men’s violence against women remains a pervasive feature of life in every country in the world. Increasing attention is being paid to engaging men and boys to end men’s violence. Programs and policies have been successfully piloted by nongovernmental organizations across the world and shown to promote important and positive change in men’s gender-related attitudes and practices, including in reducing men’s use of violence against women. Since the International Conference on Population and Development in 1994, national governments and UN agencies have steadily adopted and implemented policies and community-based interventions intended to change social norms about gender and masculinities. As cross-pollination happens across countries and regions, work with men and boys for gender equality has become more complex, ambitious, and visible, generating important synergies and successes, and some resistance. This article examines the rationale for that work; describes key findings from multicountry studies about the relationship between notions of masculinities and men’s gender-related practices; documents key principles guiding much gender equality work with men and boys; identifies emerging strategies and proposes key next steps to increase the scale, impact, and sustainability of gender transformative work with men and boys.