Man Enough? Measuring Masculine Norms to Promote Women’s Empowerment
Masculinities can either support or hinder women’s empowerment and greater gender equality. However, a lack of consistent and comparable data hinders efforts to understand and assess harmful, restrictive masculinities. This report identifies and describes ten norms of restrictive masculinities to be urgently addressed within the political, economic and private spheres. Alongside these norms the report highlights gender-equitable alternatives, which support women’s empowerment in practice. By mapping available and ideal indicators, the report provides a roadmap for efforts to measure changing norms of masculinities. In doing so, this report aims to support policies to transform masculinities by facilitating the creation of more and better data on masculine norms.
What are masculinities?
This chapter introduces and defines masculinities. It clarifies the choice of terminology used throughout this publication. The chapter also defines the scope of the report, emphasising that while masculinities can and do harm men and boys, the focus of this research is the ways in which some masculine norms negatively affect women’s empowerment. Finally, the chapter offers an overview of the report’s structure.