Men-streaming Development, war and terrorism
Men have always been known to exercise power socially over women. This is as a result of how gender has been socialized in various regions and communities. It has hence resulted to discrimination, inequalities and women subordination in all major activities. This issue seems to be ignored so much and has links to other vices such as spread of HIV/AIDs pandemic, urban crime and delinquency, pervasive patterns of conflict and war and terrorism. Gender and development have remained a female bastion regardless of men trying to appear in the gender and development disclosure. Over the years there have emerged key messages from the literature on masculinities and men. First, the dominant form of masculinity has become common among societies and cultures where men judge and assess themselves. Second, the low income and poor men seem to be the most affected since there is a huge gap between the model of dominance and what can be achieved in the real life. Some underlying factors such as inequality, exclusion and chronic poverty, conflict and declining economic conditions have made men not to achieve what the society expects of them. Third, men are faced with the pressure of portraying their manhood but it has become challenging leading to engagement in destructive, illicit and criminals activities. These behaviors do not just affect the man and woman but also has an impact on the high costs in the developing countries (245).
This chapter vividly discusses the three key messages and the underlying gender development policy and why it seems to exclude men. Moreover it has offered recommendations to address the male gender issues and the basic principles that can be of importance in moving forward regarding the issue of men streaming development agenda.
[...] Moving toward Men-streaming Development Men have always been known to exercise power socially over women. This is as a result of how gender has been socialized in various regions and communities. It has hence resulted to discrimination, inequalities and women subordination in all major activities. This issue seems to be ignored so much and has links to other vices such as spread of HIV/AIDs pandemic, urban crime and delinquency, pervasive patterns of conflict and war and terrorism. Gender and development have remained a female bastion regardless of men trying to appear in the gender and development disclosure. [...]
[...] Moreover it has offered recommendations to address the male gender issues and the basic principles that can be of importance in moving forward regarding the issue of men streaming development agenda. On the issue of hegemonic masculinity, the society have put standards on the ways of being a man, some of the ways have been highly valued and has resulted to men struggling to attain the dominant ideals of manhood. A man who is not able to reach these expectations has hence been socially ridiculed, sanctioned and belittled. [...]
[...] This has been so since the past century. The worrying point is that not much has improved, and the countries still face unfinished gender agenda. The gender advocates have insisted that men have had the big share of benefits of development and see it as unjust to make women share with men the few resources available for gender. Men have continued to lose their economic livelihoods and are disempowered (252). Most have resulted to directing their frustrations to the women through ways such as domestic violence and use of drugs and alcohol. [...]
[...] The men throughout the world seem to have understood the importance of women and girls education and income which has seen most families grow. The main challenge is that the men accept this change but still tend to hang on the traditional views. The international development community has to understand and implement the importance of gender issues in regards to the men. More effort should be geared toward reviewing the policies and programs and initiatives to discuss and address the male gender issues (255). [...]
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