Radhika Chopra in her paper titled: Narrating the Supportive Practices of Men highlighted individual life stories of men who have chosen to make gender issues and violence against women a focus of their working lives. Through these biographies of men who make self-conscious choices to live their lives according to more equitable gender practices and ideals of domestic democracy, Radhika brought to the surface more general trends in the relations between men, women and gender in contemporary Indian society.
She argued that just as violence is part of everyday gender practices so also is support, and similar to how women's rights, agency, and subjectivity remaining invisible for so long has been the concept of men's supportive practices. She said the primary aim of her research was to highlight the kind of choices men make as supporting agents, and that these biographies could provide insights into individual lives and be used as a resource to think about what men can do in particular contexts to their particular culture.
Rita Manchandas's paper entitled Why is the Male World so Violent? ‘Positive Masculinities' Pushing Against Networks of Violence that Constitute State and Nation in South Asia, presented by Saba Khattak locates the growing emphasis on empowering men to define masculinity in ways that challenge socially prescriptive male norms of power and control. The paper discusses the convergence of state and community patriarchies and, looks at the concept of empowering men. It examines the relationship between men, masculinities, and gendered violence at the inter-personal and institutional levels. In the present day context, Manchanda looks at development discourse and how it interprets masculinity. She finds the growing reliance upon men and positive masculinities in order to address the issue of violence against women problematic. She argues that increased reliance upon positive masculinities depoliticizes women's issues and renders sexual oppression invisible. Manchanda asserts that relying on the individual agency of men is inadquate to change violent masculinities without engaging with patriarchal values and institutional structures that cause oppression and violence against women. While the problematization of masculinities has been pushed through feminist research and activism, its agenda has to empower men and women.
Kamran Ahmed in his presentation entitled Balancing Masculinity: Healing the South Asian Split with the Anima outlined the historical struggle in South Asia to repress what is referred to as the Anima or the feminine in the individual and collective male psyche. He argued that the stronger the repression of the Anima by patriarchal religions and traditions, the more violent and unhealthy its expression would be. He stressed the need to explore ways to counter the continuing repression of the Anima, both directly and indirectly at the conscious and unconscious levels of the collective psyche and suggested that we should work on positive masculinities not only for making men more balanced and sensitive but also for women and the society in general to bring out the values of the feminine in society and to balance the masculine side.
Dr. Arfa Sayeda Zehra from the NCSWP chaired this session. Michael Dale from the EU, the discussant for this panel opined that there is no level playing field in Pakistan where men and women can actually sit down and talk about things because the partitioning of both genders that is seen publicly is perpetuated all the way through in the relationships of men and women. He stressed the need to focus on how do men and women talk to each other and suggested that coeducation is one way of alleviating stress and a lot of problems that are built up over the years between both sexes.
Responding to Radhika Chopra's paper, a participant during the discussion session shared the experience of Pakistan where supportive men in the women's movement are viewed positively by feminists but not by other men who take a negative view of positive masculinities. She asked about the situation in India. Chopra clarified that positive masculinities do not necessarily produce more positive masculinities, implying that the situation is similar in India. Dr. Saba Khattak disagreed with Michael Dale's suggestion that coeducation is a good way of reducing gender violence. She spoke about the ongoing debate in the UK based on findings that compared to boys, girls do not receive equal attention from teachers. This is especially in subjects such as science and engineering, thereby ensuring some degree of discrimination against girls.
Reported by Kiran Habib
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