The vulnerabilities of men have received limited attention in development research and programming. In Liberia, men’s lack of access to employment and land and their loss of traditional power and authority lay at the heart of the violence and conflict that led to the near destruction of the country. It is thus important that men’s concerns, in addition to women’s, be brought into focus in the development literature and practice.This book by the World Bank makes an important contribution to this end.

Her Excellency Mrs. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf
President of Liberia

Future generations will find it odd that at some time in the past,“gender issues” were restricted to “women’s issues.” This book is timely for Latin America, where significant advances have been made in reducing discrimination against women in political, economic, and social life (except for the unusually high levels of domestic violence against women and children), and where men’s gender problems are increasingly visible. Indeed, it is mostly boys, not girls, who are dropping out of school and engaging in criminal activities, senseless violence, alcoholism, and drug consumption.

Guillermo Perry
Chief Economist, Latin America and the Caribbean Region
World Bank

Introduction: IAN BANNON and MARIA C. CORREIA

Why Men and Development?

“With a few notable exceptions, men are rarely explicitly mentioned in gender policy documents.Where men do appear, they are generally seen as obstacles to women’s development: men must surrender their positions of dominance for women to become empowered.The superiority of women as hard working, reliable, trustworthy, socially responsible, caring and cooperative is often asserted; whilst men on the other hand are frequently portrayed as lazy, violent, promiscuous and irresponsible drunkards” (Cleaver 2000, p. 1).

Conceptual Shifts from Women to Gender

In the 1970s, feminist activists, writers, and scholars made gender a visible social construct in development. Prompted by the 1970 release of Esther Boserup’s then seminal book Women’s Role in Economic Development, academics and the development community began to see women in a new light.As a result, the earlier focus on women’s role in family welfare, characteristic of the 1950s and 1960s, shifted to women’s economic role and their active participation in development.The term “women in development” (WID) came to encompass this new model (Moser 1993).

By the 1980s, the limitations of the WID approach had become evident, and “gender and development”(GAD) replaced WID as the dominant paradigm.GAD offered a new way of tackling women’s subordination by examining socially and historically constructed gender relations between women and men, rather than treating women in isolation from men (Moser 1993). Conceptually, GAD distinguished sex (a biological construct) from gender (a social construct), thereby demonstrating the dynamic nature of women’s and men’s roles and relations. But while the theoretical underpinnings of WID and GAD were clearly different, and GAD brought a more sophisticated view of the situation of women, development practice on gender remained virtually unchanged (Cornwall 1997). In operational terms, the change implied only a simple shift in vocabulary. ...

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THE OTHER HALF OF GENDER
Men’s Issues in Development
Edited by Ian Bannon, Maria C. Correia
©2006 The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development / The World Bank

Forward:

For years, poverty was viewed primarily as an economic phenomenon— people lacking sufficient resources to meet their most basic needs. But in recent years, the concept of poverty has broadened to encompass multiple dimensions, ranging from empowerment, voice, and inclusion to accountability of institutions and lack of security. Gender, however, has stubbornly remained a onesided topic, with the focus firmly on women as the discriminated, disenfranchised group.Men are seen as the guilty party, lurking ominously in the background.Little effort has been devoted to understanding men’s possible motivations, let alone their own gendered conditions.

As with other development agencies, the World Bank took an early interest in the situation of women. In 1977, it appointed a women in development adviser and in 1986, it established the Women in Development Unit, which, as the term implies, squarely focused on women. In 1994, however, the Bank adopted a new operational policy acknowledging that, to reduce poverty effectively and sustainably, development assistance needed to address the differential impact of development interventions on women and men.The new policy marked a shift from an approach focused exclusively on women and girls to a broader integration of gender issues into Bank assistance to increase women’s participation in development.

Despite the policy change, as with other development agencies and institutions, gender has in practice continued to focus on the plight of women. Masculinity, as a gendered construct, has been largely absent from the development and gender literature and discourse.

However,a more balanced approach is beginning to emerge that also seeks to shed light on the male side of the equation.This is a positive development for women and the gender community to the degree that men are seen as responsible for the negative conditions that affect women and the obstacles they face.But it is more than this.There is also an undeniable reality that men merit understanding in their own right.

In recent years, scholars and the media have begun to raise awareness of the development issues faced by boys and men in developed countries. As discussed throughout this volume, there is an increasing, though still tentative, interest in developing countries in the need to involve men and in exploring issues of masculinity as they interact with the development process.

This volume contributes to the small, albeit growing, literature on men and gender in the context of development. It is in no way an exhaustive look; rather, it provides a collection of research and think pieces that examine the way development affects men. It aims to expand the debate and discourse on gender and development to encompass men and to identify the critical knowledge and data gaps that can help us better understand men and concepts of masculinity.With a more complete understanding of development as a gendered process that impacts both men and women,we hope ultimately to influence policy design and implementation that can move us closer to the goal of gender equity.

The social development community—with its focus on inclusion and social cohesion—is committed to this broad-based view of gender.We believe that the time has come to better understand men from a gender perspective, for the benefit of men,women (from whom and with whom men gain so much of their identity), future generations, and society as a whole.

Steen Lau Jorgensen
Director,  Social Development Department, World Bank

Visit The Other Half of Gender Wolrd Bank's Web Site

Contributors:

Mary Amuyunzu-Nyamongo holds a Ph.D. in Social Anthropology (University of Cambridge, 1994). She is currently the Executive Director of the African Institute for Health and Development (AIHD), based in Nairobi, Kenya. She has been involved in a range of research and program activities in Burkina Faso, Ethiopia, Ghana, Kenya, Malawi,Tanzania, and Uganda. She has published on a range of health and development areas, including child health,HIV/AIDS, urban poverty, adolescents and youth, gender, and health in general.

Ian Bannon is the Manager of the Conflict Prevention and Reconstruction Unit in the World Bank’s Social Development Department. He is an economist with an extensive career in the World Bank, having worked in Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and South Asia. He has researched and written on gender, education, private investment, child health, natural resources, mental health, and the links between conflict and development. His recent publications include Natural Resources and Violent Conflict: Options and Actions (coedited with Paul Collier,World Bank 2003) and Gender, Conflict, and Development (cowritten with Tsjeard Bouta and Georg Frerks,World Bank 2005).

Gary Barker is Chief Executive of Instituto Promundo—an NGO based in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, that works in gender equality, violence prevention, HIV/AIDS, and youth development. He has coordinated research and program development on the socialization of young men in Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, and North America, in collaboration with international and national organizations. His most recent publication is Dying to be Men:Youth, Masculinity and Social Exclusion (Routledge 2005).

Barry Chevannes is a Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of the West Indies, Mona, Jamaica. He is a leading expert on the Rastafari movement in Jamaica and has also published on Caribbean culture and masculinity. His work includes the 1999 Grace Kennedy Foundation Lecture,“What We Sow and What We Reap: Problems in the Cultivation of Male Identity in Jamaica,” and the book Learning to be a Man: Culture, Socialization and Gender Identity in Five Caribbean Communities (University of the West Indies 2001).

Maria C. Correia is Manager of the Multi-Country Demobilization and Reintegration (of ex-combatants) Program in the Africa Region of the World Bank.For almost a decade, she led the World Bank’s efforts to address gender issues in Latin America and the Caribbean.Over her career, she has researched and written on gender across a range of sectors, including agriculture and rural development, education, health,and labor markets, as well as youth and social development. Her recent publications include The Economics of Gender in Mexico:Work, Family, State and Market (coedited with Elizabeth Katz) and Caribbean Youth Development (cowritten with Wendy Cunningham).

Paul Francis is Senior Social Development Officer in the Africa Department of the International Monetary Fund. He has worked on the integration of social development and conflict perspectives into policy and operations in a variety of institutional environments, including the World Bank, the United Kingdom’s Department for International Development, and United Nations agencies. He has published on a range of development issues,including social capital,decentralization, rural poverty, and common property management.

Carlos Iván García Suárez is a Colombian writer and communicationseducation specialist. He is an international gender consultant and founder and member of the Men and Masculinities Collective in Bogotá. His publications include “Edugénero,” a pedagogical series on research for changes in gender relations in educational institutions. He has also coauthored publications on masculinity,gender and domestic violence, children’s sexual abuse,prostitution,and gender and sexuality. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in social sciences, children, and youth.

Fredy Hernán Gómez Alcaraz is a Colombian sociologist. He works as a researcher, consultant, and trainer in the areas of gender and masculinity, reproductive and sexual health, violence prevention, and human rights. He is associated with the School of Gender Studies at the National University of Colombia and has worked in the capacity of advisor to numerous organizations, including the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) and the Programa de Promoción de Derechos y Redes Constructoras de Paz de la Consejería Presidencial de Programas Especiales. He has authored and coauthored numerous publications on themes such as gender and social change, male sexual and reproductive health rights, masculinities in Colombia, and masculinities and domestic violence.

Joyce P. Jacobsen is Andrews Professor of Economics at Wesleyan University in Middletown, Connecticut. Her research lies mainly in the area of labor economics, including migration, sex segregation, and the effects of intermittent labor market attachment on women’s earnings. She is author of The Economics of Gender (Blackwell, second edition, 1998) and coauthor (with Gil Skillman) of Labor Markets and Employment Relationships (Blackwell 2004). She received a Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University, an M.Sc. in Economics from the London School of Economics, and an A.B. from Harvard University.

José Olavarría is a Professor and Researcher at the Facultad Latinoamericana de Ciencias Sociales (FLACSO) in Chile,where within the area of gender he is responsible for research on men and masculinities. He has worked and published widely on a range of issues, including gender, men and masculinity, labor and paternity, reproductive and sexual health, youth and education, and gender mainstreaming in public health. He is a Ph.D. candidate in social sciences at the University of Buenos Aires.

Christine Ricardo is Senior Officer for the Gender and Health Program of Instituto Promundo, a Brazilian NGO. She coordinates an international initiative for the promotion of young women’s empowerment and sexual and reproductive health, and she supports the development and dissemination of programs to engage young men in the promotion of gender equity and health. She holds an Sc.M. in Population and International Health from the Harvard School of Public Health and has extensive experience as a volunteer for organizations providing mentoring and other support services for women and children. Prior to joining Promundo, she worked for a nonprofit organization in Boston,Massachusetts,that promotes equal access to educational opportunities for youth in low-income communities.

Paul Richards holds the Chair in Technology and Agrarian Development at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands and is Professor of Anthropology at University College London. He recently led teams carrying out social assessments of postwar Liberia and Sierra Leone for the World Bank. His publications include the edited collection No Peace, No War: An Anthropology of Contemporary Armed Conflict (Currey & Ohio University Press 2004).

Marc Sommers is an Associate Research Professor of Humanitarian Studies at the Fletcher School, Tufts University. He is also a Research Fellow at Boston University’s African Studies Center. He has researched and written on at-risk children and youth, education, conflict negotiation, child soldier, urbanization, human rights, coordination, and security issues in war and postwar contexts. His work has taken him to 20 war-affected countries.His recent publications include Islands of Education: Schooling, Civil War and the Southern Sudanese (UNESCO 2005). An earlier book, Fear in Bongoland: Burundi Refugees in Urban Tanzania (Berghahn 2001), received the Margaret Mead Award for 2003.

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