As gender relations cannot be changed by one side alone, men and boys are recognised as critical allies in the promotion of gender equality and addressed as a target group.

Engaging men and boys to transform gender norms has been widely recognised as essential to achieving gender equality and promoting women’s empowerment. The Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW) was the first international agreement to include specific language about the importance of transforming harmful norms and practices of patriarchal masculinities. However, a lack of consistent and comparable data hinders efforts to understand and assess harmful, restrictive masculinities.

Based on this, in 2021 the OECD published their report "Man enough? Measuring Masculine Norms to Promote Women’s Empowerment" with support from the Austrian Development Agency. The 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 and in consequence support policies to transform masculinities based on more and better data.

ADA supports interventions in our partner countries to promote masculinities that support the empowerment of women and gender equality.