Seminar Series on 'Men, Masculinities
and Gender Relations in Development'
The culmination of many years work of the ESRC seminar series
on Men, Masculinities and Gender Relations in Development: The site comprising
of abstracts, papers and publications from the ESRC sponsored seminar series
(co-ordinated by Dr Frances Cleaver) can be found at
www.brad.ac.uk/acad/dppc/gender.html
This website aims to disseminate papers presented as part of the ESRC funded Seminar Series on 'Men,
Masculinities and Gender Relations in Development'. Co-ordinated by Dr Frances Cleaver of The Development and
Project Planning Centre, a series of five seminars was held in partnership with The School of Development Studies
(University of East Anglia); The Institute of Development Studies (University of Sussex) and Oxfam, over a period of
21 months between September 1998 and June 2000. Additional collaborators in the series included SIDA, The
London School of Economics, The University of Oxford, ACORD and Save The Children.
Seminar Coordinator and Grant Holder
Organiser, Seminar 1
Dr Frances Cleaver
Telephone: 01 274 233967
Fax: 01 274 235280
email: f.d.cleaver(AT)bradford.ac.uk
Website Research Assistant: Elisabeth Jane Milne
Seminar Programme Administrator/Web Design & Construction: Lesley Knig
>> Identifying the Gaps, Setting the Agenda
>> The Politics of the Personal
>> Working Lives, Men and Development
>> Violence, Masculinities and Development
>> Beyond Rhetoric: male involvement in gender and development policy and practice
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Abstract of one paper:
Gender-based violence
and masculinity
Summary of paper presented in January 2000
This paper presented Save the Children's approach to work on gender-based
violence and masculinity. SC UK is addressing the issue of masculinity and
violence in three types of situations: managing children's behaviour without
physical punishment; family and social violence; children in armed conflict,
refugee and displaced children. Examples were given of the tools that have been
developed to work with young people on family violence in the UK. One of these
is a video and training package to work on domestic violence with young people
to enable them to make changes in their relationships with others.
Save the Children's approach to managing children's behaviour and family
violence, starts from the premise that the socialisation that children receive
at home and in school can influence future behaviour and result in violence
within families. We therefore promote working on a number of equality and
diversity issues with children, beginning in the early years, as well as
non-violent conflict resolution and developing parenting skills for disciplining
children without physical punishment. These tools and manuals must be
appropriate for the age group of the children or young people. It is fundamental
approach to listen to what children have to say and involve them in carrying out
research and in developing and piloting some of these tools.
We have also produced a manual on preventing family violence which presents the
variety of approaches adopted by Save the Children and partners in different
parts of the world in our project work. We highlight the need for a
multi-pronged approach consisting of using the media to create awareness of the
issue, working with children, parents, teachers and lobbying governments to
change legislation. The manual starts by defining the different forms of
violence within the family and aims to help reach an understanding of the
magnitude of the problem of violence, statistics and personal stories, providing
insights into the variety of causes of family violence including male aggression
and gender roles.
In relation to children and conflict, SC ran a very successful campaign in 1999
against children being involved in adults wars. The campaign publicised the fact
that thousand of children (mainly boys but also some girls) are being used as
child soldiers in armed conflicts around the world. One of the aims was to
change current international legislation which states that children as young as
15 years are allowed to fight but, as the campaign highlighted, in many
conflicts children of nine or ten years can be seen carrying guns. The campaign
also showed the impact on children of being exposed to this type of brutal
violence: the physical and emotional devastation that witnessing and committing
atrocities has on children; the health risks and disabilities; HIV infection and
the fact that they lose out on school and having some kind of childhood.
Author:
Marilyn Thomson,
Gender Adviser, Save the Children UK
(M.Thomson(AT)SCFUK.org.uk
)
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