Report: State of the Worlds Fathers 2023
SGUK Episode 102
Introduction
A direct quote from the Archewell Foundation website about the Equimundo organisation and that Archewell is one a group of organisations who are providing support to enable Equimundo to achieve its aims and objectives.
“Equimundo, an organization working internationally to engage men and boys as allies in gender equality, has released the State of the World’s Fathers 2023 report. They conducted research across 17 countries and surveyed thousands of men and women.
The 2023 data shows that men are increasingly involved in caregiving and would like to increase their care work at home, although deeply ingrained social norms and a lack of supportive policies and power structures discourage them from doing so. The report recognizes care work as the bedrock of society, and calls for continued advancements towards gender equality. It also emphasizes the need for media representation that normalizes men’s caregiving roles.
The Archewell Foundation is proud to have supported this report, as well as Equimundo’s continued work to promote gender equality around the globe.”
The Archewell Foundation is proud to have supported this report, as well as Equimundo’s continued work to promote gender equality around the globe to engage with men and boys.
There are a number of Annual Reports going back a few years, which outlines in detail the work that has taken place in the aim to increase men and boys becoming allies for Gender equality. Once again, Archewell is working with organisations who can provide data about the work carried out to date, and the outcomes of their policy and strategy year on year. Quantifiable evidence of outcomes and rationale for making plans for the following year.
The latest report for 2023 is now published. We will touch upon it to give you an idea of the activity over this last year, but there is also a link at the end of this article where you can download the pdf version, or read it online if you prefer. In the Reference Source list, we have also included links to the Reports published in recent years. Like this current one, you can access the online version of each report, as well as choose to download the pdf version, and read it at your leisure.
The Work of Equimundo
The framework for the work of Equimundo is by a Thematic Area, by Audience, by Approach and by Region.
Thematic Area
“Equimundo works to achieve gender equality and social justice by transforming intergenerational patterns of harm and promoting patterns of care, empathy and accountability among boys and men throughout their lives. We do this in four areas of work”.
Equity of Care :- Globally, women carry out more than three times the hands-on care of children and households compared to men. The equal contribution of men to daily care work is necessary for full equality for women; for the well-being of children; for men themselves; and for healthy, just, nonviolent societies.
In 2011, Equimundo and Sonke Gender Justice co-founded MenCare: A Global Fatherhood Campaign. Now active in more than 50 countries on five continents, MenCare promotes men’s involvement as equitable, nonviolent fathers and caregivers to achieve family well-being, gender equality, and better health for mothers, fathers, and children.
Equimundo’s care equity work includes:
- Research: qualitative and quantitative research on men’s caregiving, presenting tangible evidence for lawmakers and corporate leaders. Research in care equity includes:
- The International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES): IMAGES measures men’s attitudes and practices – along with women’s opinions and reports of men’s practices – on a variety of topics related to gender equality including caregiving. Co-created by Equimundo and the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW), household surveys have been administered in nearly 50 countries. Learn more here.
- State of the World’s Fathers (SOWF): SOWF has been published every two years since 2015 and provides up-to-date global data on fatherhood, with the aim to reach policymakers, activists, corporate leaders, and donors with the data they need to move ahead a global advocacy agenda for involving men and boys as part of the solution to achieve gender equality. Learn more here.
- Programming: Our evidence-based programs engage men and women around the world in equitable care work and household dynamics.
- Program P: Named after padre and pai, the words for father in Spanish and Portuguese, Program P is a group education methodology that engages men and their partners in equitable caregiving, positive child nurturing, nonviolence, and full respect for their female partners. Authored by MenCare partners Red de Masculinidad por la Igualdad de Género, Instituto Equimundo, Fundación CulturaSalud/EME, and Equimundo, Program P has been implemented in more than 25 countries. Learn more here.
- Journeys of Transformation: First piloted in Rwanda in 2011 with RWAMREC and Care Rwanda, and since adapted in Latin America and parts of Asia, JOT complements women’s economic empowerment initiatives by targeting male partners of female participants to carry out a greater share of care work and support equitable household decision-making. Learn more here.
- Shifting the Narrative: Equimundo aims to shift the narratives in media to promote healthier, more diverse portraits of male caregiving, and to encourage governments and corporations to see men’s desires to participate as equal partners in care work by enacting policy and other long-term solutions.
- Industry, Market, and Brand Research: working with global brands who want to connect their brands to healthy masculinity and promote global goals to uplift men’s and boys’ caregiving to support greater women’s empowerment.
- The MenCare 50/50 Commitment: An initiative to ask governments and corporations to commit to accelerating men’s uptake of 50 percent of the unpaid care work by 2030, starting with 50 minutes more care work per day.
By Audience
In partnership with women’s rights and social justice movements, Equimundo’s work aims to influence those key institutions in our societies that shape and are shaped by inequitable norms of masculinity and gender inequality.
By Approach
“Equimundo aims to achieve our mission working with our partners through three overlapping approaches: Research, Programs, and Advocacy”.
Each of the above slides/diagrams all are shown on the website with a page or pages for you to access via the link, with detailed information about an initiative under this heading. In this previous slide, there is a video containing more information. Here is a screen shot of the video cover, but you can access it for more detail via this link:- https://youtu.be/tDU4gXDKW18
The Staff
I noticed on the website, that the focus was on the work and the results achieved. Details about the staff were left towards the end, just before information on how to donate, if you so wish.
All the staff are listed on the website, but I have chosen to just show details of the top 3. Not least because there is so much more that you can explore on this website, particularly previous years reports.
I will quote from the website about the 3 members of staff, and then finish this podcast with the Mission, Vision, Beliefs and History.
The Board
Gary Barker – President & CEO
Gary Barker, PhD, has been a global voice in engaging men and boys in advancing gender equality, gender justice and positive masculinities for three decades. He is the CEO and co-founder of Equimundo Center for Masculinities and Social Justice (formerly Promundo-US), a major contributor to international activism on male allyship in gender equality. He was the first Executive Director of Instituto Promundo in Brazil and led its pioneering work on healthy masculinities. He is co-founder of MenCare, a global campaign in more than 50 countries to promote men’s involvement as caregivers, and co-founder of MenEngage, a global alliance of more than 700 NGOs. He co-created the International Men and Gender Equality Survey (IMAGES), the largest survey of men’s attitudes and behaviors related to violence, fatherhood, and gender equality. He leads Equimundo’s State of the World’s Fathers reports, which has become a major advocacy platform for the global care economy. He has coordinated Equimundo’s partnerships in conflict-affected settings including work on community-based trauma support and restorative justice in the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Balkans, the US and Brazil. He advises the UN, the World Bank, national governments, international foundations and corporations on strategies to engage men and boys in promoting gender equality. In 2017 he was named by Apolitical as one of the 20 most influential people in gender policy worldwide. He is an Ashoka Fellow and received the Voices of Solidarity Award from Vital Voices for his work to engage men for gender equality. He holds a PhD in Developmental Psychology and a Research Affiliate position at the Center for Social Sciences, University of Coimbra, Portugal. He lived nearly 20 years in Latin America and is fluent in Spanish and Portuguese.
DEPARTMENT
- Board of Directors
Judy Y. Chu, Ed.D. is a Lecturer in Human Biology and Affiliate of the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, where she teaches a course on Boys’ Psychosocial Development. She is also the Co-Board Chair on the Board of Directors at Equimundo. Judy received her doctorate in Human Development and Psychology at Harvard Graduate School of Education, where she studied boys’ relationships and development in early childhood and adolescence with Carol Gilligan. Judy’s research highlights boys’ relational strengths and how their gender socialization can impact their connections to themselves and to others. She is the author of When Boys Become Boys: Development, Relationships, and Masculinity (NYU Press, 2014) and co-editor (with Niobe Way) of Adolescent Boys: Exploring Diverse Cultures of Boyhood (NYU Press, 2004). Judy also developed curricula for The Representation Project’s film, The Mask You Live In, and currently serves as Chair of Movember Foundation’s Global Men’s Health Advisory Committee.
Ron LeGrand is an attorney, licensed to practice law in Pennsylvania and the District of Columbia, and CEO of the LeGrand Group, LLC, which provides consulting services with a focus on gender-based violence, legislative affairs, and criminal justice reform. Ron has co-authored a Domestic Violence Awareness Month op-ed on Ebony, appeared on Prince George’s County, Maryland cable television programming regarding domestic violence, and was one of several planners and presenters at the recent “Band of Brothers” event for engaging men in conversations on domestic violence, sexual assault and healthy masculinity. Ron’s career includes 20 years in federal service, including as a Special Agent with the Drug Enforcement Administration, Special Narcotics Prosecutor, and Counsel to the House Select Committee on Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs. Previous experience also includes Chief Investigator and Counsel with the Senate Judiciary Committee and Counsel to the House Judiciary Committee, during which he served as lead Democratic Counsel on the Violence Against Women Reauthorization Act of 2013 and as lead Democratic Counsel on the House Committee on the Judiciary’s Over-criminalization Task Force. Ron has also served as Chief Diversity Officer for AARP and Nabisco Foods, and Vice President for Public Policy with the National Network to End Domestic Violence.
MISSION
Equimundo works to achieve gender equality and social justice by transforming intergenerational patterns of harm and promoting patterns of care, empathy and accountability among boys and men throughout their lives.
VISION
All people live in a caring, nonviolent, and gender-equitable world.
OUR BELIEFS
We believe that male-identified individuals must be active allies in achieving gender equality and full rights for women, girls and non-binary individuals. Read more here.
HISTORY
Equimundo: Center for Masculinities and Social Justice is the next phase of Promundo-US, which grew out of Instituto Promundo in Brazil. Building on Instituto Promundo’s community-based and evidence-based work to engage men and boys in gender equality with a focus on Brazil and Latin America, Promundo-US was established in 2011 as a legally independent organization to partner globally beyond Latin America and in the US. After 10 years as Promundo-US we are re-affirming our mission to take the promise of an intersectional focus on masculinities and social justice to the next level. We changed our name to make clear our focus on masculinities within and always as part of a social justice framework, and to communicate that message to a broader audience of stakeholders.
Our previous name meant “for the world.” Our new name signifies an urgent call for equity and equality in the world. We want our social and gender justice mission to be clear, accessible and visible, and for that mission to be easily identifiable in our name and in all actions both in our expanding work in the US and in our international partnerships. It is from this history and trajectory that we turn toward a new phase building partners in new spaces.
Social Media links
I just wanted to add the following extract from the this years Report.
“Research partners: This report would not have been possible without the strong network of research partners. This study and report involved input and collaboration with 17 organizations from around the world:
Support for this report was generously provided by Generation Foundation, Procter & Gamble, and The Archewell Foundation. Equimundo also thanks its core support donors: Oak Foundation, Echidna Giving, and Wellspring Philanthropic Fund”.
I was inspired by just reading about the organisations around the world who took part in the research to produce this report, and of course, so proud to see Archewell Foundation listed as one of the donors. Archewell is mixing and working with good organisations. Uplifting communities and providing data at every step of the way outlining the measurable benefits achieved so far, and the targets likely in the future. Proud to see Harry and Meghan and their team working with people who each bring something to the table, and together they are all phenomenal.
I will be reading the Reports for all the years listed on the website, and taking note of the contents of each. Absolutely making a difference in this world.
Final Words on this podcast is an extract from the Report by Sima Bahous UN Under-Secretary-General and Executive Director of UN Women.
“There is no activity that defines us more as human beings than the care we afford those who need it, whether in our families, communities, societies or nations. That we value that care so little remains a profound failing in the way we understand the world we live in and manage our affairs. Part of that devaluing of care is very much gendered. It is, as this report argues, reflective of patriarchal norms. It is part of misguided beliefs whereby those things that women more often do are valued and remunerated either less or not at all compared with than those that men more often do. Differences in time spent on unpaid care work drive women’s lower workforce participation, and their diminished participation in public and political life. Conversely, valuing and supporting care work has the potential to unlock huge gender equality dividends for all.
The calls for a fairer, better distribution of the burden of care are longstanding, and there has been progress. Such progress is founded on policy change and an accompanying cultural shift. Men and boys are central to both. For example, in the HeForShe Alliance we have consistently called on men to recognize the harmful effects of gender inequality on everyone, men, women, girls and boys alike. We have asked that they be agents for change and reject negative ideas of masculinity. There can be no more harmful an idea that a man has no place in care work.
Along with the global women’s movement, we need men to move. Men must vote, call and march for high quality universal childcare, for workplace policies that support all caregivers, for social protection policies that support all caregivers, whether engaged in formal or informal work, and for equitable, universal, and paid parental leave. The pathways to care equality and to gender equality require all of those. And their rewards will be shared by us all also”.
Executive Summary Quote
“Imagine a world that puts care at the heart of political priorities and daily lives. A world where all have access to healthcare and education, where men and boys share care equally with women and girls, parental leave for all parents is the norm, and where every household has affordable quality childcare and support in caring for aging family members”
Ivy Barrow
30/07/23
REFERENCE SOURCES:-
https://archewell.com/news/equimundo-report-the-state-of-the-worlds-fathers/
https://www.equimundo.org/resources/state-of-the-worlds-fathers-2023/
https://www.equimundo.org/our-work/#by-thematic-area