As we ‘choose to challenge’ gender stereotypes, is the boy-child left out?
Women’s Day is celebrated internationally on every 8th day of March. Undoubtedly, it is a day where women ‘collect the gains’ and recharge for another year of pursuing gender equality.
This year’s theme was ‘choose to challenge’. Yes, a call was made to men and women across the globe to choose to challenge gender stereotypes in all their forms – from pay gaps, participation in leadership and decision making to land ownership.
Indeed, the long history of patriarchal systems has left us with many, many things to challenge!
But the question we must ask here is whether what we choose to challenge is comprehensive.
When we have challenged and overcome all stereotypes that blight the girl child, will we have created an environment where both the girl and the boy child will thrive in or will we need to start another full-blown movement for the boy child?
There is always going to be two sides of any gender empowerment effort. We should not only challenge the systems, norms and practices that constrain women, we must also challenge any system or norm that prescribes men to certain codes of conduct and behaviour in which they don’t thrive, slowing down the overall gender equality progress.
Behavioural prescriptions on men are double-edged
Men are expected to be strong, assertive, and aggressive. Statements such as ‘be strong, you are a man;’ ‘man up;’ ‘crying is for girls,’ etc., are double-edged swords.
The key thing to remember is that if we are empowering the girl-child to rise and stand for herself, we must equally - and at the same time - challenge the narratives that portray the girl as weak, and the man as strong.
This is not only so that the girl can grow in a society that celebrates and enjoys, rather than resent and mock her empowerment. Challenging these narratives will also empower the boy-child to show up and participate rather than stay on the sidelines and watch - or, even worse: isolate and plunge into depression.
Toxic masculinity
The unprepared boy-child will grow to become one of the many men who fall prey to the false idea that they should be “tough enough” to fix all their problems on their own.
This toxic masculinity is associated with a lot of mental health stigma towards men. Also, the macho attitude, where men see depression or sadness as a sign of weakness, and a lack of personal fortitude, doesn’t make it any better.
Clearly, this is an outdated way of thinking, as we live in a dynamic and challenging social world where men are no more equipped to deal with the challenges than women are. We need each other!
This means that empowering the girl-child and not leave the boy-child behind requires the participation of both men as individuals, and of society at large. Men must welcome a shift in the thinking so that they can coexist and thrive with the empowered girl-child.
The society must on the other hand, acknowledge and cushion the pressure that is put on men to always be strong. Both men and women need to be strong, but within the boundaries of seeing each other as human, imperfect - and, therefore, need each other.
All in all, empowering the girl-child must go hand in hand with empowering and reconstructing the boy-child’s meaning of what it means to be a man, and what it means to coexist and thrive in the world of an empowered girl-child. Indeed, without that, the compounding cost of neglecting the boy-child will cast a long shadow into the future.
As such, as we choose to challenge gender stereotype against women every day, we must also choose to challenge practices that do not equip the boy-child with the right thinking for thriving in the world where the girl-child thrives.
