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.
Masculinities and women’s empowerment in the economic and political spheres
This chapter presents five norms of restrictive masculinities that directly affect women’s and girls’ empowerment and well-being in the economic and political spheres. The norms in these spheres dictate that a “real” man should: i) be the breadwinner, ii) be financially dominant, iii) work in “manly” jobs, iv) be the “ideal worker” and v) be a “manly” leader. As such, these norms emphasise men’s economic and leadership roles in society, which in turn promote the devaluation of women’s contribution to these spheres. Even so, in some places, the masculine norms that characterise the political and economic spheres are not fully restrictive, demonstrating a growing acceptance of gender-equitable masculinities.
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