Seminar Series on Men, Masculinities

   Contributions    

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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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