Men's Activism to End Violence Against Women
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MEN’S ACTIVISM TO END VIOLENCE AGAINST WOMEN Voices from Spain, Sweden and the UK Nicole Westmarland Anna- Lena Almqvist Linn Egeberg Holmgren Sandy Ruxton Stephen Robert Burrell Custodio Delgado Valbuena First published in Great Britain in 2021 by Policy Press, an imprint of Bristol University Press University of Bristol 1– 9 Old Park Hill Bristol BS2 8BB UK t: +44 (0)117 954 5940 e: bup- [email protected] Details of international sales and distribution partners are available at policy.bristoluniversitypress.co.uk © Bristol University Press 2021 The digital PDF version of this title is available Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 4.0 license (https:// creativecommons.org/ licenses/ by- nc- nd/4.0) which permits reproduction and distribution for non- commercial use without further permission provided the original work is attributed. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978- 1- 4473- 5618- 9 hardcover ISBN 978- 1- 4473- 5619- 6 paperback ISBN 978- 1- 4473- 5621- 9 ePub ISBN 978- 1- 4473- 5797- 1 OA PDF The right of Nicole Westmarland, Anna- Lena Almqvist, Linn Egeberg Holmgren, Sandy Ruxton, Stephen Robert Burrell, Custodio Delgado Valbuena to be identified as authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved: no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of Bristol University Press. Every reasonable effort has been made to obtain permission to reproduce copyrighted material. If, however, anyone knows of an oversight, please contact the publisher. 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Printed in Great Britain by CMP, Poole For this and future generations of activists Contents List of figures vi Notes on authors vii Acknowledgements ix 1 The need for men’s involvement 1 2 Becoming involved 27 3 Being involved 59 4 Getting more men involved 83 5 Conclusions: where next? 123 References 133 Index 143 v List of figures 1 Possible benefits of more men taking a public stance 28 on violence against women 2 Possible risks of more men taking a public stance on 63 violence against women 3 Factors most likely to encourage men to take a public 89 stance on violence against women 4 Factors most likely to prevent men from taking a public 101 stance on violence against women 5 The most important actions men can take to support 120 women speaking out through campaigns such as #MeToo vi Notes on authors Anna- Lena Almqvist is an Associate Professor in Social Work at Mälardalen University, Sweden. Her research interests focus on work– family balance, families with two mothers and youth in complex life situations, often in a comparative perspective. She has published her work on young people in Community, Work & Family (Taylor and Francis, 2018) and on the role of partners and workplaces in relation to parental leave decisions in Men and Masculinities (Sage, 2017). Stephen Robert Burrell is an Assistant Professor (Research) in the Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA) in the Department of Sociology, Durham University, UK. Stephen has carried out research on the prevention of men’s violence against women, masculine gender norms, masculinities and COVID- 19, and undertaken an ESRC Postdoctoral Fellowship on the business sector’s role in violence prevention. Custodio Delgado Valbuena is a Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology, Seville University, Spain. He is interested in the sociology of gender, education and social inequalities and men and masculinities. He has published a number of books, chapters and articles on these subjects. He was co- founder of the first Men’s Group of Seville, a member of Red de Hombres por la Igualdad in Spain and a member of MenEngage Europe. Linn Egeberg Holmgren is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work at the Centre for Social Work, Department of Sociology, Uppsala University, Sweden. Her research interests consist of interactionist theory, interview methodologies and men’s profeminist work. She has worked as an expert advisor in surveying gender equality interventions focusing on men, boys and masculinity. Her PhD research was on men as feminists, and she has also published on researching men and masculinities. Sandy Ruxton is an independent consultant and Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology, Durham University, UK. He has conducted men and masculinities research for a range of organisations including the European Institute for Gender Equality, the European Women’s Lobby, Oxfam, the Open University, the British Council and the Government Equalities Office. He is a member of the Steering Committee of MenEngage Europe. vii Men’s Activism to End Violence Against Women Nicole Westmarland is a Professor of Criminology and Director of the Centre for Research into Violence and Abuse (CRiVA) in the Department of Sociology at Durham University, UK. Her previous books include Violence against Women (Routledge, 2015), Researching Gender, Violence and Abuse (Routledge, 2018), International Approaches to Rape (Policy Press, 2011) and International Approaches to Prostitution (Policy Press, 2006). viii newgenprepdf Acknowledgements We are grateful to all who have supported us in the preparation of this book, including the research advisory group, research participants, our work colleagues, university administration staff and our personal family and friends. The research was made possible through funding from the British Academy (Grant number SG151643). ix 1 The need for men’s involvement Men’s violence against women and girls is a problem crossing all social groups. Globally, it constitutes a leading cause of the premature death of women and children, with its impacts ricocheting far into all communities (Westmarland, 2015). Many have argued that men must engage further in the movement to end violence against women. However, there is relatively little knowledge available about structural and individual factors that might enable and support this engagement. This book aims to develop an understanding of the factors that enable men to actively take a stance against men’s violence against women. Based on a survey and in-depth interviews with men who are involved in this work in three European countries (Spain, Sweden and the UK), we explored the men’s own personal backgrounds and motivations as well as asking them to act as ‘experts’ in understanding which factors (personal, socio- cultural, political and/ or economic) might encourage and support more men to become active. This is a field of research that we as authors have been involved in in a variety of ways for different lengths of time. The research project leading up to this book initially came about through discussions between Nicole Westmarland, Sandy Ruxton and Keith Pringle, with others joining the project as it progressed. The research was funded by the British Academy. We had two core research questions that we set out to answer: 1. What are the personal backgrounds and life experiences that lead some men to actively and publicly challenge men’s violence in society? 2. What are the socio-political, personal, political and economic factors that are conducive to enabling and supporting more men to do so? This chapter outlines why this topic is important and describes the research methods we used to investigate it, as well as the rationale for our focus on Spain, Sweden and the UK. It then provides a brief background of the men who took part in the research. Finally, it 1 Men’s Activism to End Violence Against Women provides an overview of key international research, and considers the unique contexts of the three different countries focused upon. Why research men who take action against men’s violence against women? It has become increasingly recognised in recent decades, both within feminist movements and in wider society, that it is important for men to speak out about men’s violence against women (Flood, 2019). Flood (2011) argues that there is a powerful feminist rationale for involving men in such efforts: they are predominantly responsible for the problem in the first place, in terms of its perpetration; violence against women is built upon social constructions of masculinity and on men’s structural dominance across the different levels of society; and men also have the potential, currently largely untapped, to play an important positive role in helping to end violence against women. Indeed, given the first two points, they could be seen as having an ethical responsibility to do so (Pease, 2002). In Spain, Sweden and the UK, along with many other countries, the 1970s was a key decade in which the Women’s Liberation Movement raised awareness about the pervasiveness of such violence and started to establish women’s refuges, shelters and rape crisis centres in a quest to keep women safe. Since then, the feminist movement has diversified, expanded and been highly influential in a range of academic, policy and practice advances. What to do with the men who perpetrate such violence and abuse has been a much slower conversation, and this has stilted attempts to reduce or end men’s violence against women.