Undressing Patriarchy : Redressing Inequalities

UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY REDRESSING INEQUALITIES INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM 9-12 SEPTEMBER 2013 UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY: REDRESSING INEQUALITIES Report of an international symposium 9-12 September 2013, Brighton: Institute of Development Studies First published by the Institute of Development Studies in November 2013 © Institute of Development Studies 2013 ISBN: 978 1 78118 143 0 All rights reserved. Reproduction, copy, transmission, or translation of any part of this publication may be made only under the following conditions: • • • with the prior permission of the publisher; or with a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd., 90 Tottenham Court Road, London, W1P 9HE, UK, or from another national licensing agency; or under the terms set out below. This publication is copyright, but may be reproduced by any method without fee for teaching or nonproit purposes, but not for resale. Formal permission is required for all such uses, but normally will be granted immediately. For copying in any other circumstances, or for reuse in other publications, or for translation or adaptation, prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher and a fee may be payable. This is an output under the grant on ‘Gender, Power and Sexuality: Connecting local voices to global arenas for equality and rights’, funded by the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida). Available from: Communications Team, Institute of Development Studies, Brighton, BN1 9RE, UK Tel: +44 (0) 1273 915637 Fax: +44 (0) 1273 621202 E-mail: [email protected] Web: www.ids.ac.uk/ids/bookshop IDS is a charitable company limited by guarantee and registered in England (No. 877338) Photo on cover page: Credit: © KellyB - creative commons on lickr UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY: REDRESSING INEQUALITIES Kate Hawkins, with Preetha Bisht, Alexandra Kelbert, Carolina Maldonado Pacheco, Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed and Jerker Edström November 2013 REFUGEE LAW PROJECT UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY: REDRESSING INEQUALITIES ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This report was written by Kate Hawkins who was assisted by Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed, Preetha Bisht, Alexandra Kelbert, and Carolina Maldonado Pacheco. The report synthesises discussions which were held at the ‘Undressing Patriarchy Symposium’ which was held in Brighton on 9–12 September 2013. The Symposium was co-organised by Jerker Edström, akshay khanna, Stephen Wood, Alyson Brody and Jas Vaghadia (all at the Institute of Development Studies, UK), with Andrea Cornwall (University of Sussex, UK), Philip E Otieno (Men for Gender Equality Now, Kenya), Chris Dolan (Refugee Law Project, Uganda) and Satish Kumar (Centre for Health and Social Justice, India). Furthermore, a broader informal advisory group was consulted on an ad-hoc basis on speciic issues and which included Nadia Badran (Société de Développement Inirmière et Communautaire, Lebanon), Kate Hawkins (Pamoja Communications, UK), Pinar Ilkkaracan (Women for Women’s Human Rights, Turkey) and Marcos Nascimento (Centro Latinoamericano en Sexualidad y Derechos Humanos, Brazil). The Symposium forms part of a larger body of work on gender, power and sexuality at the Institute of Development Studies. This work builds on long-standing partnerships and collaborations which have been exploring engaging men and boys for gender equity, pathways of women’s empowerment, sexuality and international development, and gender within social movements. The discussions, debates and disagreements within this report build on earlier work, most notably the Politicising Masculinities Symposium which took place in 2007 in Dakar (www.ids.ac.uk/iles/dmile/Masculinities.pdf). We are deeply grateful to the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (Sida), for their support for the symposium, the production of this report and other outputs, under an institutional IDS grant on ‘Gender, Power and Sexuality: Connecting local voices to global arenas for equality and rights’. This symposium would not have been possible without the hard work and ‘grace under ire’ of Jas Vaghadia of the Institute of Development Studies. It is always a pleasure working with her and we appreciate her efforts to ensure that everything ran so eficiently, even on the edge of chaos! CONTENTS Acknowledgements 1. Introduction 1.1 The genesis of Undressing Patriarchy 1.2 A few words from an organiser 1.3 Who came? 1.4 Motivations for coming together 2. The process 2.1 Agenda 2.2 The personal is political 2.3 Forming afinity groups 2.4 Hard talk 2.5 Provocation: the personal is political 2.6 Digging deeper in small groups 2.6.1 Feminist frictions: beyond victimhood 2.6.2 Theorising patriarchy 2.6.3 Structures of power 2.6.4 Working with men and boys 2.6.5 Practical ways forward 2.7 Coming together for change: duos, triads and more 2.8 Provocations: feminist perspectives, Kyriarchy and the macro-political 2.9 What have we learned? 2.10 Mixing the colours 3. Digging deeper: future directions for undressing patriarchy 3.1 Challenging patriarchy in law 3.2 The Second Global Symposium for Working With Men and Boys, Delhi 3.3 Disability and the Delhi Forum November 2014 and beyond 3.4 BRIDGE power relations within social justice movements 3.5 Politicising work with men and boys 3.6 Focusing on men and women in power 3.7 Travelling ilm caravan 3.8 Sexual and reproductive health and HIV 3.9 Race and nation 3.10 Looking to the future 4. The way forward 4 6 6 7 8 9 9 11 14 15 16 18 20 21 22 22 24 27 29 31 33 36 38 38 38 38 39 39 39 40 40 40 40 40 1. INTRODUCTION From 9–12 September a diverse group of activists, academics and “An unlikely encounter practitioners came together at the Imperial Hotel in Brighton (UK) around of unusual suspects in the theme of patriarchy. Over four days they: shared personal relections unconventional about the impact that patriarchy has had on their own lives; swapped dialogues...” theory; watched ilms, sang and danced together; discussed practical interventions for challenging harmful social norms and building new ways of thinking and acting; talked on the move during a ‘walkshop’ on the sunny Sussex coast; and agreed a future agenda for change. The objectives of the meeting were: • • • • To make visible assumptions, realities and new expressions of shifting patriarchal power structures; To reveal key gendered pathways and connections between different forms and systems of power, and advance thinking about patriarchy in relation to intersecting structures of power; To document dialogues and communicate new thinking on patriarchy and gender justice to a broader audience in social science, gender and development; To develop a roadmap for future directions and collaborations addressing patriarchal inequity. 1.1 THE GENESIS OF UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY Six years ago many of the participants at the symposium gathered in Dakar (Senegal) at a meeting about ‘Politicising Masculinities: Beyond the Personal’. The meeting was an opportunity to challenge the ways in which masculinities and work with men and boys had been taken up in policy and in discourse. During their discussions they: challenged the idea of the gender binary; explored the multiple contexts that give rise to gender inequalities; and tried to ind ways of stimulating creative alliances between like-minded social movements. The meeting led to a book Men and Development: Politicizing Masculinities (http:/zedbooks.co.uk/node/12218), projects on mobilising men to challenge gender-based violence (www.ids.ac.uk/publication/mobilising-men-in-practice-challenging-sexual-and-gender-based-violence-ininstitutional-settings) and a meeting on heteronormativity which took place in South Africa. 6 1.2 A FEW WORDS FROM AN ORGANISER Jerker Edström, one of the symposium organisers, provided an introduction into why he felt it was important to ‘Undress Patriarchy’. ‘In August 2012, at a meeting hosted by the Refugee Law Project, some of us agreed that the time had come to hold an international symposium that brought together thinkers, activists and policymakers concerned with women’s empowerment, sexual rights, men’s engagement in gender equality and social justice more broadly. The aim would be to explore the patriarchal features of different systems of power. The feminist insistence on a focus on women’s subordination, discrimination and experiences of marginalisation, has brought attention not only to male supremacy and privilege, but also to an almost invisible and presumptive male centeredness of public life and discourse. Queer Theory and work on sexual and reproductive rights has highlighted the role of heterosexist power relations and critiqued the idea of gender as a binary system. It has identiied how ‘heteronormativity’ and ‘heterosexism’ are integral to patriarchal power relations. Queer theorists, have also explored the connections between sexuality, race, gender and structural violence. In men and masculinities work there has been progress in making men visible within gender, to see masculinity as the performances of being manly. Progressive work on gender has also highlighted the notion of hegemonic masculinity which makes many other forms of masculinity subordinate. Loosely following Alan Johnson, who described patriarchy as a type of complex social system based on four roots, we could point to: ‘Male supremacy’ (the subordination of women and ‘lesser men’); ‘Male privilege’ (discrimination against women); ‘Male centeredness’ (or the ‘unmarked male’); and ‘an obsession with control and order’. The last root, ‘an obsession with control and order’ is a way of describing how patriarchal systems are focused on expansion, winning and domination as opposed to values like trust, diversity, equality and mutual accountability. We could call this ‘male order’, the desire to homogenise, categorise, abstract and exclude anomalies whilst dividing the world into binaries. We do not expect to emerge from the symposium with a simple ‘recipe for ending patriarchy’. What we do hope to achieve is to revitalise and advance conversations and thinking about gender inequality in relation to patriarchy and other structures of power and to re-politicise ‘gender in development’. We hope to make patriarchy – which is certainly problematic, complex and oppressive – more comprehensible and visible. What may look hopelessly daunting might start to look a bit a bit less complicated once the layers of clothing are gradually peeled off.’ 7 1.3 WHO CAME? Participants were a mix of people from all major geographical regions who were drawn from the ields of feminism, masculinities, sexuality and social justice. The group included academics, activists, and policymakers. NAME Aarthi Pai Abhijit Das akshay khanna Alyson Brody Andrea Cornwall Chris Dolan Dean Peacock Frank Karioris Gary Barker Henry Armas Horacio Sivori Imtiaz Pavel Jas Vaghadia Jaya Sharma Jenny Birchall Jerker Edström John Spall Katarzyna Kosmala Kate Hawkins Leyla Sharai Marc Peters Marisa Viane Mariz Tadros Meena Seshu 8 ORGANISATION Freelance Centre for Health and Social Justice Institute of Development Studies Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex Refugee Law Project Sonke Gender Justice Network University of Central Europe Promundo Independent Centro Latinoamericano en Sexualidad y Derechos Humanos MIRROR Institute Institute of Development Studies Consultant to NIRANTAR Institute of Development Studies Institute of Development Studies University of Sussex University of the West of Scotland Pamoja Communications United Nations’ Population Fund MenEngage Alliance Association for Women's Rights in Development Institute of Development Studies SANGRAM/CASAM COUNTRY India India UK UK UK Uganda South Africa Hungary/USA USA Peru Brazil Bangladesh UK India UK UK UK UK UK USA USA Brazil/US UK India Mien Ly Naomi Hossain Nikki van der Gaag Onen David Patrick Welsh Paul Dover Phil Otieno Purnima Gupta Rabih Maher Satish Kumar Singh Stephen Wood Tim Shand Xiao-Pei He Zahrah Nesbitt-Ahmed Alex Kelbert Carolina Maldonado Pacheco Preetha Bisht Independent Feminist Filmmaker/Trainer Institute of Development Studies Independent writer and gender consultant Refugee Law Project Independent consultant, founder member of the Association of Men Against Violence in Nicaragua Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency Men for Gender Equality Now NIRANTAR HELEM Centre for Health and Social Justice Institute of Development Studies Sonke Gender Justice Network Pink Triangle Institute of Development Studies Institute of Development Studies Institute of Development Studies Institute of Development Studies Malaysia UK/Indonesia UK Uganda Nicaragua Sweden Kenya India Lebanon India UK South Africa China UK UK UK UK 1.4 MOTIVATIONS FOR COMING TOGETHER For many ‘patriarchy’ is an old-fashioned term which has little relevance or connection with current work on gender. To others it is laden with negative connotations and relects a feminist vision in which all men are labelled aggressors or oppressors. For some it is a term which is just too esoteric to get a handle on. All of these views were expressed during the symposium. Yet participants also felt that there was promise in, and something exciting about, the notion of ‘Undressing Patriarchy’ which had inspired them to draft background papers and travel across the world to take part in the conversation. Their reasons included: ‘Patriarchal privilege has been quietly ignored in the lives and politics of many gay men. They don’t interrogate their privilege and I want to change that.’ 9 ‘I want to understand masculinities in a more political way and the implications of rights language for our understanding of patriarchy.’ ‘How do we produce more caring and less careless masculinities?’ ‘Marriage as an institution is the foundation of patriarchy. But the gay and lesbian movement is now very into marriage. How do we challenge this?’ ‘Speaking as a young feminist I would like to explore how elements of patriarchy replicate themselves in our own movements. We need more self-relection and values clariication.’ ‘I don’t want my son to grow up to be a patriarch.’ ‘I have an ambivalent relationship with the word patriarchy and yet I bandy the term around all the time. It will be good to reclaim it from the analysis of all men as patriarchs. It will allow us to see who beneits and loses from this. It will also allow us to look at sites of power.’ ‘How can you explain these discussions to people who are not immersed in them?’ ‘The global economic crisis is showing the cracks in the surface of how patriarchy is lived in everyday lives. Now is the right time to refocus the discussion.’ ‘Power structures are essentially male ordered, I want to explore the masculinity of hegemony.’ ‘What do you get if you undress patriarchy? What does it look like underneath? Can we imagine a world without it? How can stories, ilm, art, media help us to envision this?’ ‘It is about power and power can be seductive – we all embrace it in our daily lives and it can reproduce structures of inequality in our own work for social justice.’ ‘How do we address the ways that patriarchy is bad for men whilst still recognising the battles for women’s rights? How do we make sure that in our own work that we challenge at the political level and within the new development architecture which is in itself very patriarchal – e.g. the post-Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) agenda?’ ‘If the metaphor is that patriarchy is a prison – who are the prisoners and who are the prison wardens?’ 10 2. THE PROCESS The Symposium used participatory tools and small group work to enable creativity, in-depth conversations, and action planning. It fostered unconventional dialogues and avoided very formal presentations in favour of collective discussions and dynamic exercises which left space for spontaneous initiatives. “We are not arriving with all our perfectly formed opinions and we are having a conversation to come to a clearer articulation of what we think.” The structure of the agenda of the Symposium, followed a certain low and logic. We started on day one with personal and diverse perspectives, to – on day two – work on exploring power, patriarchy and change in depth. Day three then aimed at making connections at intersections, exploring commonalities and tensions, whilst day four ended with setting some directions and forward-looking planning. 11 2.1 AGENDA Day 1: Personal journeys and diverse perspectives on patriarchy • Welcome and Introductions • Motivations (‘What concerns me about patriarchy?’), hopes and fears • Ground rules and agenda overview Coffee Break • Lifelines drawing. Drawing ‘our lives’ encounters with patriarchy’ • ‘Walkabout sharing’ • ‘Undressing Patriarchy’: Introductory framing address by the organizers Lunch • ‘World Café’ for forming afinity groups. along the principal themes • Hard-Talk Provocations: 2 individuals are interviewed, by an interviewer Afternoon Tea break • Hard-Talk (contd.): 1 more individual is interviewed Evening • Free (...for individual reading of selected Afinity Group papers) Day 2: Exploring powers, patriarchy and change in depth • Relections from Day 1 • Regroup into Afinity Groups (with warm-up exercises) • Afinity Group discussions of submitted paper Coffee Break • Afinity Group discussions (contd.) Identifying key emerging themes in afinity - group sort emerging themes with cards and prepare an exhibition poster/display • Market place of ‘theme exhibits’ by group Lunch • Speed ‘dating’: to link with people from other ields to ‘take out’ on a promenade • Seafront ‘talk n’ walk-shop’: to dialogue on key dilemmas and questions they have Return and Afternoon Tea • Report back on dialogues: Facilitated plenary drawing relection Evening • Participants’ video ‘Film Festival’ 12 Day 3: Intersections of inequity, shared goals, differences and tensions • Relections from Day 2 • Afinity Group discussions: ‘What have we learned from each other?’ (relecting on papers, Hard Talk and beach walks, aim to surface tensions) Coffee Break • Report back by each afinity group - key ideas, dilemmas and tensions. Groups are encouraged to do this in creative ways Lunch - ‘show and tell’ Book talk • ‘Mixing the colours’: New groups are formed along key questions and dilemmas • Group discussions Each mixed group explores its issue, dilemma/question in depth. Afternoon Tea break • Report back from the new mixed cross-groups. • Relections from Day 3 Evening • Undressing Patriarchy Party. Day 4: New directions, priorities and joint projects • New directions emerging – Plenary: Facilitated morning debate to capture key lessons and emerging thinking from the irst three days Coffee Break • ‘SOSOTEC’ (or, ‘self-organising systems on the edges of chaos’) – a free-lowing exercise for joint planning of new initiatives. • ‘Walkabout sharing’ of new initiative ideas. Lunch • Closing Evaluation. Thanks and good-byes 13 2.2 THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL In order to get participants to relate patriarchy to their own histories and working practices the meeting opened with an exercise where people were asked to draw a visual representation of their ‘Encounters with patriarchy’. They were asked to relect on the following questions: • • • What are the positions of power and privilege that you enjoy today that you are comfortable/ uncomfortable with? What were the encounters that made you conscious about power and privilege? Where are the areas where you have achieved resolution? These were then discussed in more detail in small groups. In a plenary session participants were asked to relect on their main learning from the task. It was clear that people’s childhood experiences and how their families worked shaped their pathways through privilege in quite particular ways. This echoed the idea that certain privileges are hereditary and some are learnt. However, moments, such as getting married or having a particular job, also affected their relationships to power. The levels of power and privilege that people felt they had seemed to wax, wane and shift over time. People felt that power relations based on sexuality, ethnicity, class, (dis)ability, caste, religion etc. cannot be removed from patriarchy. These power relations intersect and also constitute each other. They argued that it is important to recognise your relationship with different power structures so that you can challenge them or take advantage of them for social beneit. To some traditional gender roles have a ‘seductive power’ and afford privileges which make them dificult to shift. Participants’ encounters with patriarchy had been characterised by situations where they were both privileged and oppressed in some way. People felt that it is possible to feel simultaneously comfortable and uncomfortable about the privileges that we have. The term patriarchy is most familiar to people as a term which explains gendered power relations. We explored other terms which might more adequately describe the multiple forms of power that we live with. The term ‘Kyriarchy’ was suggested as an alternative to patriarchy. According to Wikipedia: ‘Kyriarchy (‘rule by a lord’; from the Greek κύριος/kyrios ’lord or master’ and αρχή/arche ’authority, leadership’) is a social system or set of connecting social systems built around domination, oppression, and submission. The word itself is a neologism coined by Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza to describe interconnected, interacting, and self-extending systems of domination and submission, in which a single individual might be oppressed in some relationships and privileged in others. It is an intersectional extension of the idea of patriarchy beyond gender. Kyriarchy encompasses sexism, racism, economic injustice, and other forms of dominating hierarchy in which the subordination of one person or group to another is internalized and institutionalized1.’ 1 A fuller explanation of the term can be found at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy [last accessed 8 October 2013]. 2.3 FORMING AFFINITY GROUPS Participants were asked to form smaller afinity groups based on the cross-cutting themes that they found most interesting in the background papers that had been submitted to the symposium. A brainstorm about priorities identiied the following topics for further discussion: Feminist frictions: beyond victimhood: • Theorising patriarchy; • Structures of power; • Working with men and boys on patriarchy; and • Practical ways forward. “We are trying to create role models. In doing so we need to stress that society and culture are dynamic and change all the time.” 2.4 HARD TALK The Hard Talk session, modelled on the BBC World Service programme of the same name, was a chance to hear how people are grappling with patriarchy ‘on the ground.’ Mariz Tadros (Institute of Development Studies) interviews Phil Otieno (Men for Gender Equality Now - MEGEN) Men for Gender Equality Now work with boys and men in the community in Kenya to promote human rights principles. We started, in 2001, to engage men in ending violence against women. I was motivated to do this work based on my own personal experience. Sometimes I wonder, ‘Do men have to be personally affected to get started in this work? What does it take?’ As a global movement I think it is important to speak men’s emotional language and understand the problems that they have in order to motivate them. The irst time you contact men they will ask why they should address women’s problems rather than their own. We provide a space where they can talk about their own vulnerability and the problems that they face, for example in providing for their families. We have been mobilising men who are boda boda (motorcycle taxi) drivers to challenge violence against women. We say to them, ‘The women who are experiencing violence and being raped, they could be your sister, daughters or wives. That is why you should be engaged.’ Society sanctions violence against women and so they are only ascribing to norms that they are living with. They need to be encouraged to question these norms. Feminists are often uncomfortable with men’s involvement in this type of work and mainstream society considers them weaklings. They are attacked on all sides. We try to make them feel special and proud, as people who stand out and make a difference. Patriarchy is about male dominance and each one of us experiences this differently. We need to look at who the main perpetrators are in order to see how we can unravel it. Patriarchy can be used in a positive way in some instances. For example, if you are in a position of power in an organisation, you can come up with policies and practice which challenge the status quo. But how do you use your position to inluence positive change and inluence communities? That is the question that we all need to ask ourselves. Naomi Hossain (Institute of Development Studies) interviews Gary Barker (Promundo) Promundo was founded in 1999 to challenge the notion that masculinity is necessarily violent and that care work is women’s work. We worked with men in Brazilian favelas who were actively questioning the violence around them and used their voices to shape campaigns and interventions. We believe that men and boys should do 50 per cent of the world’s unpaid care work – and that this should be a target within whatever 16 policy framework replaces the Millennium Development Goals. Our ‘Men Care’ Campaign is active in 25 countries. The campaign is afirmative and uses positive images of men doing diverse forms of care work. Caregiving creates a close connection with others provides deep meaning for most people. The bodily experience of caring for others comes with some health beneits. We ind that this message resonates with men – either because they have done care work before or because they haven’t and they believe that they have missed out as a result. There has been a lot of political investment in women’s participation in paid work but we seem stuck about how we deal with the care of others. “Given demographic shifts we are all likely to be more responsible for the care of elderly people. We need to appeal to men, to explain that how they treat their parents will set a precedent about how they are cared for.” 17 In some settings as the wages for care have gone up then men have been doing it. Younger urban men with some secondary education have gravitated towards care work. But they are doing the fun work not the dirtier work which women tend to do. Out of work men are doing more of it than we might have thought. As fertility goes down, and children are staying in school longer, women are working more and more girls are in school and so men doing more of the care work is inevitable. States need to support this shift. Caregiving needs to be valued in schools. For example intergenerational mentoring is one way of demonstrating to children how care is given and why it is important. Chris Dolan (Refugee Law Project (RLP) interviews Meena Seshu (SANGRAM) VAMP, a collective of sex workers, is afiliated with the NGO that I work with, SANGRAM. The sex workers in VAMP can teach us a great deal about patriarchy, despite the fact that sex work is often seen as a ‘victim position’. “As a middle class feminist I went into the sex worker community looking for victims because this is what my education taught me sex workers were. But the women I met refused to be put into this box.” We also work with rural married women and despite the fact that they are having relationships with the same men as the sex workers the levels of power that they have are quite different. The sex workers organised in a year; the rural women took ten years to collectivise. Sex workers were able to enforce condom use in no time; most of the HIV+ rural women I work with have condoms and knowledge about HIV but can’t enforce condom use. Feminists look at having to cater to a man for money as a problem. I have heard it called, ‘The trivialisation of the vagina for 20 rupees.’ But sex workers say ‘What about trivialising male sexual power for 20 rupees?’ They argue that they are able to decide the transactions in the contract with their clients, what they will do and who they will have sex with, this is not always so easy for other women. Sex workers say that they are not in sex work to cater to male demand, they are in sex work to ill their stomachs. I was socialised to take care of my uterus and to fear pregnancy outside marriage. But sex workers are not so obsessed with which girls are going to marry and who will father the next generation. Society has stigmatised the relationship between sex workers and their clients because sex with love is a privileged type of relationship. That is what a lot of people ind challenging about sex work. But men go to sex workers because they are unhappy with their sexual life with their wives and they need to explore their desires. This is an issue for all women. 18 2.5 PROVOCATION: THE PERSONAL IS POLITICAL On the second day of the meeting we wanted to shake things up by asking one of the participants to make us think more deeply and carefully about the issues on the table. Marc Peters of MenEngage provided some personal relections on being a white, straight, middle-class, American man working on issues related to patriarchy. ‘My background is in US politics, where you spend a lot of time not being provocative or offending anyone, so this is a new experience! I wanted to comment on some of the things that are left unsaid when we engage in these types of conversations. In the US patriarchy has evolved to be a catch-all for many types of oppression, for example discrimination on the grounds of ethnicity. It is dificult to unpick and isolate different axes of discrimination. Because when we do we are asking people to be less than their full self, because we experience the world through a number of different identity lenses. I don’t feel like I have an identity group. I am white, heterosexual, cis male – a member of almost all the dominant groups. I don’t have to deine my identity because my identity is assumed to be the identity of everyone else regardless of the reality. I struggle when we separate ourselves into identity groups – maybe because I don’t know where I it in as an ally in those groups or because I feel it separates us from each other. When we divide ourselves based on identities, or things that we disagree on, I feel like there is something missing. Disagreement and debate is important but it is easy to de-evolve from disagreement to separation and siloes. The structure in which we live is set up to be adversarial. How do you choose whose rights to ight for? What is the priority? I am reminded of Martin Luther King’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” where he talks about white moderates’ fear of tension, people who prefer order or who prefer peace to chaos. Whilst white moderates, my own peer group, have come a long way since the civil rights era there is still a section of this group that paternalistically feels that they can set the timetable for another man’s freedom. White men at the top level in the patriarchal system can’t be separated from race and ethnicity. There is a popular view that men control patriarchy and dictate how it operates. But in my experience patriarchy is operating over all of us. Men certainly have the least personal investment in changing things because it beneits us. But the system does not allow us to give up our privilege. All I can do is use my privilege for social justice goals. There is a sense of helplessness in this. It is easy to be paralysed by relection. I try not to think about patriarchy – it is uncomfortable and it is uncomfortable to do anything about it’. 19 Marc’s provocation led to a lively discussion among participants. They wondered whether his discomfort with politics based around identity or interest might make him uncomfortable because it is the irst time that he doesn’t belong. People felt that when you are a minority it can be exhausting living in the mainstream and so these separate spaces and campaigns are necessary. But this doesn’t preclude the possibility of working together on a common goal. Others relected on the diversity of the people in the room and how some feminists lost the knack of speaking with men and with other groups such as sexuality activists. The sparks that ly when we come together and the feeling of discomfort this can cause is useful. We discussed how within alliances you can lend your support to each other’s issues without ever truly taking them on as your own. As a result we don’t fully explore or highlight the common beneits of change. 20 2.6 DIGGING DEEPER IN SMALL GROUPS The provocation was followed by work in our afinity groups to pull out emerging themes based on research or practice. Each group presented a lip chart summary of their discussions, which provided the chance for feedback and contestation. 2.6.1 FEMINIST FRICTIONS: BEYOND VICTIMHOOD This group looked at some of the tensions that exist within feminist movements which hamper effective work on patriarchy. Victims and heroines Too often debates around girls’ agency have become another binary – either girls are victims or they are heroines – which fails to acknowledge the complexities of their lives. Once someone is labelled a victim it justiies a whole raft of interventions to ‘save’ them. The victimhood label has its origins in radical feminism where life is always loaded against women and all men are perpetrators. But many girls and women reject the victim label, they don’t identify with the concept. Most people feel a combination of victim and survivor at different stages of their lives and take on evolving identities to navigate their way through dificult situations. There is often a troubling debate about women who have been traficked into sex work, or coerced into it, who make an informed choice to remain in the sex industry and don’t want to be rescued or rehabilitated. Where is the debate around agency and choice in terms of opting in or opting out in this situation? The lack of voice given to people is problematic – they are not heard and people feel compelled to speak on their behalf. The ‘agency discourse’ can on occasion be more problematic than the victimhood one. In its most simplistic sense, within this model you ‘empower’ girls to enter the market based on the notion that women and girls will save the world. It strips away gender relations and power and it is also highly neoliberal. In this model empowerment is instrumental, to achieve economic ends, and it is often connected to privatisation and an erosion of state provision of services. The utility of the law in challenging patriarchy The realm of law has been useful in furthering claims for rights and equality. However, the ways in which patriarchy is imbued in legal and judicial systems has been under-theorised. There are contestations that happen when you make a claim on the grounds of a certain identity. The law never intended to treat you equally – it is there to safeguard inheritance. The recent rapes in Delhi provide an example of the insuficient workings of the law. Much of the discussion around the penalty for the perpetrators was related to righting the ‘dishonour’ that had been done to the victim’s family. Dalit women get raped all the time and few people care. The overwhelming response to these crimes is related to caste and class. The victims were 21 working women, they were urban, and this is why the middle classes were in uproar and why the media was interested, because they relate. The perpetrators are from a lower socioeconomic class. But nobody questioned what is happening economically and politically to create the circumstances for this kind of crime. There is far less interest in the dangerous combination of economic disparity, aggression, and precarious living conditions. Working with men for gender equality Feminism gets reframed over time and younger women are much more open to working with men. There are many unanswered questions about how we might do this. Much of the work on masculinities is with poorer, less powerful men – but there is a need to work with those men who are in the most powerful positions too. Feminism has an appreciation of structures of privilege but this is sometimes less evident in work on masculinity. Men are either instrumentalised (we need to involve them to empower women) or engagement with men is restricted to the personal realm (for example preventing interpersonal violence). Some of the campaigns around encouraging men to do more care work take an incentivising, conciliatory and encouraging approach. Whilst this has some utility, when should we stop trying to persuade and start demanding that the balance of work and responsibility changes? Where is the moral outrage that men are not playing a full role in caring? This is particularly important as in many settings the state is taking less responsibility for an ageing population. With many of these campaigns we are asking poor men to do more work and yet rich and powerful men are left to carry on as they are. 2.6.2 THEORISING PATRIARCHY This group wanted to better understand and articulate the theory of patriarchy. Recognising men’s vulnerability and intersectionality In simplistic terms, the radical feminist interpretation of patriarchy is the idea that men are oppressors who are in cohort with the system. But this a problematic way of theorising patriarchy because it fails to see men as also negatively affected by the system. For example, this theory does not take account of power imbalances between a poor black man in the US and a middle-class white woman. A key challenge when theorising patriarchy is how to maintain the lens of intersectionality and continue to consider discrimination on the grounds of religion, (dis)ability, caste, class etc. Deining the key elements of patriarchy Patriarchy involves • Hierarchies of power relations; • Male igure/logic of authority; • Production and reproduction, through acts, performances; • Systemic dimensions with various incentives and disincentives, or rewards and punishments for different types of behaviour. 22 2.6.3 STRUCTURES OF POWER This group wanted to try and locate and better understand different structures of power with a view to challenging them. Locating power Too often gender equality is only looked at as a cultural issue but patriarchy is perpetuated by political and economic systems. It is not always easy to locate sites of power because the play of power dynamics goes beyond individuals or institutional policies. For example staff in organisations such as the World Bank might want to change the politics or the system but are unable to do so either because of the interplay of global and local forces which organisations respond to. 23 Development agencies often organise themselves in a masculinist manner that is ‘unmarked’ and unquestioned. For example, they assume the presence of a wife who accompanies the executive on oficial postings. FAO promotes exclusive six months breastfeeding as part of its health strategies but it gives only three months maternity leave to its staff. The US government promotes early childhood education but does not pay for the childcare of staff because the assumption is that mothers stay at home. This hypocrisy is rarely questioned or challenged but these practices perpetuate patriarchal notions in society. We need to understand the culture/class of organisations and the way that power orders a certain kind of behaviour and ways of doing business. Global inancial risk-taking is an example of this from recent years. The very fact that this kind of doing business is increasingly being recognised as illegal and banks are being held accountable and being asked to pay heavy ines, gives civil society an entry point to engage with these issues. But having said this, these are still in power and continue to do business which says a lot about the rigidity of power structures. There is a certain glamour about free markets, as this system has been empowering/liberating for certain sections of society, particularly women, by providing them with work opportunities. What remains unquestioned or hidden are the conditions under which this liberation is taking place, for example in terms of the insecure working conditions or the wage differentials or the extra burden that it puts on women as they try to juggle various responsibilities. Practice random acts of non-patriarchy We need to better understand the gender subjectivities of individual and institutional sites of power. This may mean research on ‘men in suits’ and the global elites and their institutions. We also need to better understand and contest the internal policies of our own organisations. There are many people resisting patriarchy and we need to ind a way of highlighting and showcasing the way that they live their lives to inspire others. We also need to think about alternative models for the way that we do economics, for example the introduction of the Robin Hood, or inancial transaction, tax in the UK. What can we learn from pro-feminist, cooperative social movements, such as the Slow Food movement? We need to better understand why the sum of our efforts has not led to greater change. How do we capture the social imagination with the ight against patriarchy and come up with new ways of measuring its impact? There is a need to redeine the type of work identity which is celebrated. With the Precariat1, the economic crisis in Europe, and youth unemployment, there may be an opportunity to rethink work and caregiving by constructing more non-corporate, non-violent identities and celebrating these so they become more of the norm and less of the exception. 2 For more on the Precariat see this entry in Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precariat [last accessed 21 October 2013] 24 2.6.4 WORKING WITH MEN AND BOYS This group formed to think through how best to politicise work with men and boys to challenge patriarchy. Tracking change We need to understand the cultural, social and religious environment that men and boys work within in order to construct a theory of change which helps us to understand how transformation happens. Unfortunately, many groups working in this area fail to document the things that they do. In addition, it is dificult to create meaningful indicators for work on challenging patriarchy which allow you to track progress over time. The time frame within which change is realistically likely to happen is far longer than donors expect or are willing to fund, which is a challenge. 25 In recent times we have faced the ‘tyranny of the randomised control trial’, these kinds of methods of assessing impact are not necessarily suited to work on men and boys. It is also very dificult to get baseline information on men’s attitudes to measure against. In Nicaragua they have experimented with doing in-depth interviews with men about their attitudes and also with the signiicant women in their lives e.g. daughters, wives or co-workers, to get their perceptions of change. This kind of work takes a lot of time and may not provide the hard evidence that funders are looking for. Diversity and reach When we talk about men we need to respect diversity, we need to give space for a wide range of men to be involved in activities. We should use low-hanging fruit and existing platforms and systems like churches and schools to reach out to men and anchor our programmes in existing community structures to extend our ideas to the grass roots. 26 We need to consciously engage with government stakeholders and other role models. Most work on men and boys is premised on individual learning and change, but what does this mean for larger scale policies and practice? Some governments don’t take up lessons, they work on existing systems and structures which can be dificult to shift. 2.6.5 PRACTICAL WAYS FORWARD This group was tasked with thinking of ways in which meeting discussions could feed into participants’ everyday work once they return home. Talking patriarchy By talking about patriarchy we diminish its power by showing how it is just a set of assumptions and that change is possible. It is important to stress that patriarchy only beneits a small group of people, and there is very little beneit in it to anyone overall. We need to stop talking on the terms set by the very thing that we are trying to defeat. This means that we need to stop talking and working in patriarchal terms if we are trying to undress the patriarchy. To some extent the existing dialogue on patriarchy is set in a very patriarchal model and that is why there is less change than there could be. We need to encourage other social movements to look at issues of gender without this being a diversion from other important issues or something that dilutes their impact. There has been a reluctance to talk about gender and rights as they are seen as ‘soft issues’ even within the development sector. In many settings gender discussions have not adequately dealt with issues of power and intersectionality. How we present these issues and the language that we use is important as we do not want to alienate people. There is a balance to be struck between engaging people whilst being suitably hard-hitting about the issues we are dealing with. Sometimes this is about inding internal champions who can help frame messages as well as get them to people with the power to make decisions. There is a need to engage donors and the UN so that they support movement-building in this area. An inclusive conversation There is a disconnect between generations – young people are not invited to the table where decisions are made. They are only needed to implement what has already been decided and this is a very patriarchal way of doing gender work. There is a need to understand intergenerational structures within social movements that lead to the alienation of younger people. Younger people can learn from the experience of the older ones and get the know-how, and the older generation can better understand what’s happening with young people and how to address their needs more eficiently. One area where young people have an edge is in their understanding of how to use new information and communication technologies to reach out to new audiences. Often the older generation wants the younger one to learn the language that they use, but they should be more open to learning new languages 27 themselves. This is part of letting go of what you think is your power. Using art in activism is also important. Popular culture can be a space for the imagination, where young people can raise issues in, and on, their own terms. That is not to say that social media is not used to enforce patriarchy, but that it can be subverted as a force for change and as a way to bypass patriarchal gatekeepers in arenas like the mainstream media. We also need to raise the issue of patriarchy in international policy. Post-2015 discussions provide a useful opportunity as new agendas are being formulated. In addition, changes in South-South cooperation mean that developing countries are no longer depending on traditional Northern donors. This is changing understandings of resources and funding which we could capitalise on. 28 2.7 COMING TOGETHER FOR CHANGE: DUOS, TRIADS AND MORE In order to make sure that all participants had a chance to interact and share we conducted a ‘speed dating’ exercise. Each participant was able to chat with a peer for one minute about what they had found interesting about the meeting so far and what was missing. When a timer sounded they had to move on to a new partner. This was followed by a ‘Walk n’ Talk Shop’ along Brighton seafront. Based on earlier conversations participants split into small groups to discuss the issues that were raised in more detail. The issues that participants chose to discuss included: • The ways in which disability intersects with patriarchy and the relative silence of the meeting on this issue. Attitudes to disability are inluenced by prevailing patriarchal gender norms which privilege productive and reproductive capacities and this can have implications for the way in which disabled people’s sexuality is viewed. • Men’s sexual and reproductive health and rights, institutionalising this work and how it relates to other work with men and boys. • The problematic way that state and constitutional law functions (as a highly hegemonic tool) and the need to be strategic in how we devise our future actions on law and patriarchy. • Uganda and the violence that young men perpetrate and face in daily life and the customs and practices that support this. • The need to think more about working with men and boys beyond offering incentives for behaviour change to making common cause because we are all effected by gender norms and power imbalances. • Mobilising men and boys to deal with gender-based violence beyond the personal and community level. How do we link work on violence with structural change and with other issues such as property rights and representation in the political sphere? • Moving beyond the vulnerability frame. This has been the common way of beginning work with men and boys. But what about those men who have undue privileges? Equality cannot only be the aspiration of the vulnerable, it needs to be the concern of all. • Power relations within sectors like the corporate world/inancial sector, the development sector, the health sector and the care economy and the education sector and the military. Men in political power are important too, for example in parliament or lawmakers. 29 • We need to think of politics that transcends interests and interest groups. People can be stimulated to act against their own interests. It is sometimes possible to ind a higher principle in common without abandoning your own interests. Consensus isn’t always desirable because it buries differences, but these differences can give you energy. How do we work with this? • The need to start from our own personal relections and consciousness-raising so that we keep the personal in this work. 30 2.8 PROVOCATIONS: FEMINIST PERSPECTIVES, KYRIARCHY AND THE MACRO-POLITICAL At the beginning of Day 3 short provocations were provided by Nicki van der Gaag, akshay khanna and Horacio Sivori to enable us to relect on what we had learned so far and to push us to go further. Nicki van der Gaag ‘I will take a feminist perspective and look at how women’s rights it, or don’t it, with some of the masculinities work. For me the personal is political and vice versa. We were a traditional family and my mother looked after the children. My parents transmitted a very traditional view of gender roles, for example that girls did the jobs in the house. I was a good student to try to prove that a girl could be academic. When I got into university my mother cried with horror but my father supported me. I never married and I was involved in leftist politics. At the time I was aware of the range of feminisms. I found radical feminism problematic because I was heterosexual and had relationships with men. Intersectionality inluenced me, I remember conferences where people came from all over the world and there were very evident divisions between First and Third World women and lesbian and heterosexual women. I started masculinities work in the early 2000s. Then as an independent consultant I did work on girls. To me it is clear that much of the focus on girls leaves out the issue of gender. I found it was easier to talk to pro-feminist men about women’s rights than it was to talk to my feminist friends about masculinity. From this I have the following relections: 1. Men take up women’s space. Men in our society have the power and they are not going to give this up easily. Even supportive men have been brought up to think that you have the right to speak and when you do you have the support of the patriarchy behind you. 2. There is a challenge related to the allocation of resources. Recently there has been more interest in masculinities work, which is good. However I am concerned this focus will take money away from important women’s rights work. 3. I am concerned the masculinities work will move in the same direction as work on and with girls i.e. that it will be instrumentalised.’ Horacio Sivori ‘My work has been conventionally academic although we do extension work to ensure that research is communicated and applied in practice. I am an anthropologist and as such I am not so comfortable in this space. We are struggling to situate patriarchy which is a loaded term and is tied to radical feminism. Kyriarchy is the operation of structures of privilege and domination and as such is not necessarily based on the man-woman dyad. It is a way of creating more complexity. It also seems that in the meeting there is a polarisation between a more pragmatist and more utopian approach to this question which could be portrayed as the unruly and the normative. The utopian approach is to provoke analysis, theory and 31 revolutionary politics. On the other hand, there are actors here who are invested in public policy. How do we deal with this tension? We need to move beyond actors – whether they are feminists, policymakers, men and boys – to debunking and deconstructing what the imagined subject is in different claims.’ akshay khanna ‘We have been focusing on subjects but we need to step into the realm of the macro-political. We need to look at the intersections and the relationship between race, caste, class, sexuality and how these things constitute each other rather than being separate aspects of ourselves. For example, Kemp Town is a gay district of Brighton so it is named as a place of sexuality. But it is also extremely racist and classist. Because we have named it a sexual space ethnicity gets subsumed. This is important because there is a tendency towards a cynical appropriation of rights language. Talking about LGBT rights has become a marker of being progressive. So you can support gay rights whilst carrying out illegal wars. The time when the anti-gay bill was introduced in Uganda coincided with debates about oil and anti-corruption rising to the surface.’ 32 2.9 WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED? Participants went back into their small groups in order to discuss what we learned from each other during the course of the meeting and what more needs to be done in the future. Key areas for future work included: • A critical focus on marriage A large part of feminist politics has been a critique of marriage because it is a patriarchal institution and it undermines the citizenship of single women. But now gay friends are ighting for marriage equality and entering into civil partnerships. People say that they are marrying for inheritance reasons. This takes us towards equality but not necessarily towards liberation. In some instances when gay people ight for marriage it is not a ight for justice it is a ight for their own beneit and respectability because the celebration of love links sex with love and this is the respectable form of sex. But there are exceptions to this. Equal marriage in Argentina was made possible because it doesn’t only beneit gays and lesbians – it expands the deinition of marriage and family. It is unfortunate that many states will only recognise these unions within the frame of marriage. In Brazil stable unions have the same status as the married couple. • Beyond binaries The man/woman binary, or women and girls vs men and boys binary can bring about productive discussions. But this meeting has failed to adequately deal with people of other genders. It is also problematic to suggest that one either has to be utopian or pragmatic. We need to ind a way forward together that draws on all our strengths and diversity. • Checking our own ways of working The gender dynamics in the room are sub-optimal. Men who are relatively senior in their own organisations are speaking over the younger people. How can we imagine a world where people work cooperatively if we haven’t interrogated our own privilege and how they relate to class and race dynamics. • Positive approaches It is important to avoid pessimism and to recognise the gains that we have made and give ourselves credit as activists who have changed things for the better. Some positive developments include that: the LGBT movement has widened our understanding of gender plurality, even to the extent that oficial forms and documents have taken this on; in Chile 80 per cent of men are present during childbirth; in Senegal Female Genital Mutilation has been effectively eradicated; in Bangladesh Purdah is no longer the norm; there have been dramatic changes in condom use among young people in Africa; and violence against women in the US and the UK has come down. What we need to do is identify the gaps and fractures in patriarchy and see how we widen them. 33 • Money problems Groups tend to focus on the allocation of resources. The very language of ‘diversion’ of resources (e.g. away from women and girls, towards men and boys) is problematic as it highlights deep-rooted assumptions about the value of different people’s work. • Allocating resources It is not the size of the pot of money that it is interesting – it is the system by which funds are delivered and how this evolves. Grass roots community-level organisations are often autonomous and human rights and community-led but are under-resourced as donors ind it more convenient to give to large national NGOs, international NGOs and government. The ‘results agenda’ and a focus on monitoring and evaluation compounds this problem. This creates an artiicial struggle between work with men and boys and work on women’s rights • Challenging heterosexism and homophobia Heterosexism and homophobia should be seen as central issues in work on masculinity and patriarchy, not just in relation to heterosexuals overcoming their own homophobia but how homophobia is also an obstacle to change in heterosexual men. Novel feedback One group chose to illustrate some of the points from their discussion through a performance around the fact that men had been taking up a lot of space over the course of the symposium. The performance revolved around a central character ranting about individual power dynamics and spaces, privileges and the phallus. The other people standing around him keep interrupting him, to remind him of some of the points that had been raised during the group discussion. He always replies with a smile and the catchphrase ‘I absolutely understand your moral outrage but…’ Through these interruptions, some of the issues raised relate to the problem with binary understandings of gender, the need to talk about vulnerability as well as power, the fact that patriarchal power is not closed to women, and inally the possibility of removing ourselves altogether from conversations we deem irrelevant. By the time the last ‘interruption’ is made, the speaker realises that everyone has progressively left and are now having their own conversations elsewhere. 34 35 2.10 MIXING THE COLOURS In the ‘Mixing the colours’ exercise we formed new groups based on a brainstorm about questions and dilemmas that are still outstanding. Issues that were added to the mix included: disability and patriarchy; queer perspectives; identities and intersections; pathways of change; and capitalism, socialism and patriarchy. • Disability and patriarchy Disabled people have been invisible in the symposium, despite the fact that many of us have impairments of one kind or another. For people theorising about power this is quite frightening. With aging populations, living with a disability is becoming more and more common. Yet the world is structured as if everybody is able-bodied. Disabled people are stereotyped by the helping industry as victims, brave survivors or heroines in ways that mirror the narrative about girls. They are often made invisible in discussions about gender or sexuality. Patriarchy sells us an image of the reproductive body which is valorised and has certain qualities. Disabled people often don’t it into this normative set of criteria and are therefore rejected. They are wrongly considered non-reproductive and non-productive and therefore fall lower down the patriarchal hierarchy. Alternatively they are considered hypersexual leading to grave human rights abuses such as forced sterilisation. There are ways that disabled people resist and escape patriarchal pressures, creating their own ‘outsider’ communities. For example in some countries if you are small in stature you can only get work as entertainers or in circuses. In some places small people live together in communities, creating their own kinship network and supporting the group. Better understanding these modes of resistance may give us new ideas for tackling patriarchy. • Queer perspectives Queer perspectives can shake up the binaries of femininities and masculinities. Within work on masculinities there are often a lot of heterosexist assumptions. Although men’s movements may be coming more aware of gay rights there is little integration of queer issues into their work. Some elements of the LGBTI movement are not relective about these issues either. Heteronormativity affects all people and this is what we should be focussing on. • Identities and intersections Identities can cause challenges when they come into opposition with each other. Working together means sharing power and releasing privilege so that others can gain. But much of the politics related to social justice is about proving who is the most oppressed, discriminated against or vulnerable, rather than recognising when you are not. A common cause allows people to put certain tensions aside but it 36 may require a new form of politics; there are instances of inding common cause that we can learn from. For example it was the women’s movement in Nicaragua that kept the issue of the decriminalisation of homosexuality alive. • Pathways of change Change is not a straightforward linear process and conlict often gets written out of the script of change. Is there a way that donors would accept conlict as being an indicator of productive change? Individual stories and testimonies can be powerful and demonstrate that change is possible and the personal is political, but often donors want much grander and larger changes to demonstrate value for money and return on investment and this can be hard to see or measure. They are unwilling to make the kinds of investments that will sustain change. • Capitalism, socialism and patriarchy Capitalism relies on the institution of marriage for the production and reproduction of social capital, and the protection of property. Left wing movements can also have a troubling attachment to patriarchy. For example in Latin America left wing governments (both in the past and currently) that have come up with different forms of patriarchy, as was the case with left wing guerrillas in the 1970s whereby often women were depicted as ‘relief’ (descansado) for men. This generated a backlash today with many women rejecting left wing politics. We need to acknowledge that neither capitalism nor socialism can deal with the issue of patriarchy. Instead we need to see how patriarchy is articulated in those different situations, as a way of helping us understand of patriarchy itself. 37 3. DIGGING DEEPER: FUTURE DIRECTIONS FOR UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY In order to work intensively on next steps from the meeting participants used a methodology called ‘SOSOTEC’ (or, ‘self-organising systems on the edges of chaos’). Participants chose their own priority areas and then wandered round the room to ind others who wanted to think through the implications of their topic to future action. The groups were loosely organised and people could leave them whenever they felt comfortable to do so. The meeting ended with a great deal of energy and excitement at the possibilities that had been generated across the four days of work and pledges to keep in touch to continue and broaden out the debate on just how we will ‘Undress Patriarchy’. 3.1 CHALLENGING PATRIARCHY IN LAW The best people to question the replication of patriarchal norms within the law are people practicing jurisprudence. It is important to engage with young lawyers working on criminal and commercial law to enable them to question their education and practice. Not just statutory law but also enforcement and procedure. We will begin by looking at how the issue of patriarchy and law is currently framed. We will also look at queer lawyers, such as those that fought the 377 case (which in effect criminalised homosexuality) in India, to understand their role in this challenge. It might be interesting to compare India and Argentina in this regard as the experiences of lawyers might be quite different across the two countries. 3.2 THE SECOND GLOBAL SYMPOSIUM FOR WORKING WITH MEN AND BOYS, DELHI, NOVEMBER 2014 It was agreed that the organisers of the Global Symposium will actively try to broaden out the focus of that meeting so that it is inclusive of other social justice movements that we would like to involve in the conversation about patriarchy. All participants will be given the opportunity to comment on the concept note for the symposium and provide ideas for how this might happen. 3.3 DISABILITY AND THE DELHI FORUM, NOVEMBER 2014 AND BEYOND The Second Global Symposium for Working with Men and Boys will take place in Delhi in November 2014. Participants agreed to help support the disability stream of work within the symposium – one that cross-cuts all of the sessions being held. They will invite disability activists to be part of this effort. It is hoped that we will broaden out the contributions in terms of ilms, studies and speakers on disability. This would help us prepare for the Association for Women’s Rights in Development conference in 2016. 38 3.4 BRIDGE POWER RELATIONS WITHIN SOCIAL JUSTICE MOVEMENTS The BRIDGE Cutting Edge Pack on Gender and Social Movements has recently been published (www.bridge.ids. ac.uk/go/cutting-edge-programmes/gender-and-socialmovements). It contains a number of recommendations for social movements on working on gender. BRIDGE would like to ind groups and organisations who would be interested in piloting some of the suggestions to see if they work in practice. This could be documented creatively through multi-generational, non-patriarchal methods which could include diary records, ilms, tweets, blogging etc. 3.5 POLITICISING WORK WITH MEN AND BOYS There is agreement that we need to augment work with men and boys which occurs at an emotional and individual level with more political work. To do this we need to both better understand how masculinities activists can learn from the feminist movements and better integrate an intersectional analysis within the work. This could include a series of trainings, dialogues and workshops. It would also be useful to identify promising practice in this area and document it. It would be good to ind a way of talking simultaneously about privilege and vulnerability, risk and vulnerability. Violence is one lens through which to view these issues. An email-based conversation between practitioners working on politicising violence would be a good way of starting this conversation. 3.6 FOCUSING ON MEN AND WOMEN IN POWER Participants agreed to start a collective research effort to look at men and women in power and their role at producing and reproducing patriarchy. This may include people in the corporate, medical, military, and development sectors. It could include looking at the networks and processes that enable these people to maintain power and move freely across different sectors. 39 3.7 TRAVELLING FILM CARAVAN Through this collaboration we have identiied a number of ilms which analyse the workings of patriarchy. Participants suggested that these ilms are curated and travel from country to country and that the dialogues that they spark are collected. 3.8 SEXUAL AND REPRODUCTIVE HEALTH AND HIV A stream of work which looks at men’s sexual and reproductive health and HIV needs and the gaps in policy and service provision was proposed. This would be explicitly linked to, and supportive of women’s sexual and reproductive health needs and demands such as the provision of safe abortion services. 3.9 RACE AND NATION We need to better understand the relationship between race, nationalism, sexuality and gender. Participants have already identiied enough material for a book which it is hoped will be published soon. But there is scope for further research across four or ive countries on issues like homonationalism and new forms of aggressive masculinity which are related to the idea of the nation. It is hoped that the mainstream media could be engaged on this issue. 4. TAKING WORK FORWARD Participants left the workshop enthused with a sense of how they might implement thinking on the patriarchy into their everyday practice and how they could forge partnerships for the future. They appreciated the mix of sessions in the workshop and the way that academic papers were used to frame issues but that more creative facilitation and the use of ilms stimulated them to think differently about the topic. Linking theory with ground-level experience and programming lessons enabled them to consider how their learning could be applied in practice. 40 41 41 UNDRESSING PATRIARCHY: REDRESSING INEQUALITIES The global economic crisis is showing the cracks in the surface of how patriarchy is lived in everyday lives; is now not the right time to refocus the discussion? Can we reclaim ‘patriarchy’ from the analysis of all men as patriarchs? How do we understand masculinities in a more political way? How do we address the ways that patriarchy is bad for men, whilst still recognising the battles for women’s rights? What are the implications of rights language for an understanding of patriarchy? If marriage as an institution is the foundation of patriarchy, why are gay and lesbian movements so into marriage now? What do you get if you undress patriarchy? What does it look like underneath? How can stories, ilm, art media help us to envision this? If the metaphor is that patriarchy is a prison, who are the prisoners and who are the prison wardens? How do elements of patriarchy replicate themselves in our feminist movements? Patriarchy may be seen as an old-fashioned term with little relevance to current work on gender, yet these kinds of questions motivated participants to get excited about the notion of ‘Undressing Patriarchy’ and inspired them to draft background papers and to travel across the world to take part in this conversation. This was an unlikely encounter of unusual suspects. They spent four days together in a hotel in Brighton, in September 2013, engaged in rather unconventional dialogues across perspectives from feminism, men and masculinities work, sexual rights and other social justice struggles. This publication captures some of the dilemmas, new thinking, the interactive process, analyses, future possibilities and challenges identiied in these debates in Brighton.