The last few years have witnessed a much-needed and growing awareness of the importance of women's issues. The rise of notable movements such as #MeToo, #Timesup and the World Women's March have brought the fight for equity to the forefront. However, gender equity is still considered a “women’s issue” and a women-only crusade. For Womanity, one way to change this idea is through our approach to what we do – involving men and women in the fight for gender equality.
When women prosper, all humanity advances
A long-standing idea has contributed to the view that women are the only ones who will benefit from a more equal society. But at Womanity we believe that when women thrive, all of humanity advances.
And the statistics confirm this. It is estimated that $12 trillion could be added to global GDP by 2025 by promoting equity for women (Mckinsey Report 2015). Meanwhile, gender-diverse companies were 15% more likely to achieve greater financial returns than national industry averages. Studies also show that women reinvest up to 90% of their income back into their families, compared to just 30% to 40% for men. We also know that there is a link between gender equity and peace, with some reports suggesting that gender equity is the number one predictor of peace – more than wealth, level of democracy or religious identity of a state.
The case is clear – pushing for equity is not only the morally right thing to do, but crucially important for the economic, social and political progress of nations, benefiting all people, everywhere. And equity means more than just gender diversity (in business, politics, etc.). For Womanity, changing attitudes and educating boys and men is a central component of that mission.
The Womanity Award
One of our most recent initiatives, in particular, has this idea at its heart. The Womanity Award is a unique initiative that brings visibility to innovative solutions that address the root causes of violence against women and promotes partnerships between organizations around the world to scale up these solutions.
Launched in 2014, the first Womanity Award focused on the theme “The role of men in confronting gender-based violence”. The Brazilian-founded organization, Promundo, and its Lebanese partners, ABAAD, were the first winners of the award.
Promundo had already achieved great success with Program H, a program created to address the roots of violence, positively transforming gender norms. As part of Program H, gender-equitable involvement of men as caregivers is promoted, and harmful gender stereotypes in schools and workplaces are deconstructed. With the support of Womanity, Promundo and ABAAD worked to adapt Program H to the Lebanese context, which was called Program Ra. As a result of this collaboration, 19 organizations in Lebanon have been trained on how to apply the Ra Program and are conducting violence prevention and masculinity workshops in 42 locations.
Communication: a tool for education
Questioning gender stereotypes is not just about questioning stereotypes of women, but also those of men. Much of Promundo’s work focuses on this idea and the concept of “toxic masculinity”. Last year, they released a major body of work linking toxic masculinity to sexual harassment . Many of us still live in a society where the ideals and messages that “true masculinity” is about physical strength, dominance and never taking “no” for an answer are commonplace.
The Womanity Award is just one example of how we make an effort to involve boys and men in the fight for equity. It's a big part of our communications work too. For example, Radio Nisaa, our female-focused Palestinian radio station, makes a big effort to bring men into the conversation about gender equity, targeting content that inspires male listeners. This includes inviting male speakers to participate on topics related to women's rights and running programs that talk about topics such as fatherhood, women in the workplace and the role of men in the family, to name just a few.
More recently, we worked with Promundo to produce a series of videos about the role of men in gender equality. The series, filmed at the WoW Festival in Brazil and called WoW Visions: The role of men for gender equality , presented a variety of visions related to areas of action, among them – urbanism, health, communication and ethnic-racial relations. The short films brought together reflections from experts and activists on the participation of men as allies in defending women's rights and promoting gender equality, including many of Womanity's partners.
SDG 5 makes equality everyone's business
The inclusion of gender equality as a Sustainable Development Goal further reinforces that the path to gender equity must be inclusive. By including it as an independent target, it is recognized that only by achieving gender equality will sustainable development be achieved. For this to happen, we all need to follow this. We need men, as well as women, in every corner of the world fighting to change systems and structures to make gender inequality a thing of the past. If we can find a way to do this, we will all be better for it.
Find out more about the Womanity Award here . (link in English)
Find out more about Radio Nisaa here . (link in English)
*In this article Rafia Qureshi writes especially for Promundo to address the Womanity Foundation's perspective on gender equity and the involvement of men as allies. Womanity Foundation supported Promundo in a series of initiatives, including the production of the video series WoW Visions: The role of men for gender equality (watch the first video here ) and the documentary The Future of Masculinities: Men and Gender Equity .
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