Promoting gender-equitable masculinities through formal education

• In Event: Promoting gender equitable values in schools in challenging digital and social contexts

Proposal

Recent international surveys have raised an alarm over a decline in support for gender equality and/or rising support for gender-inequitable views among adolescent boys and young men. Though this is not universal, there are examples of this trend in multiple world regions (Betts Razavi, 2024). In parallel, recent decades have seen growing commitment to integrating gender equality into education curricula, principally through relationships and sex education, but also through stand-alone courses and workshops. In a context of growing concern about how to counter the influence of online misogyny, education is often seen as a key entry point.

But evidence about how education systems can do so effectively, and at scale, has not been well-synthesised. This is particularly the case in low and middle income countries, where externally funded pilot projects are often better evaluated and documented than national education systems reform. As a result, discussions of supportive systems for large-scale implementation of gender equality curricula have been limited. They have also failed to engage with some key challenges. These include how to teach these curricula in ways that speak to the gendered experiences of boys in all their diversity, and help them think differently about gender inequality. Another critical challenge lies in institutionalising approaches that are grounded in critical thinking and relatively non-hierarchical relationships between facilitators and students, in contexts that favour students absorbing content to pass high-stakes exams, and where teaching styles are typically more didactic.

Over the past year, ODI has undertaken an extensive review of academic and practitioner literature on efforts to promote gender-equitable masculinities through formal education, accompanied by interviews with practitioners in seven countries (spanning Africa, Asia, Europe and Latin America). This has synthesized insights in two key areas: 1) the pedagogies, curricula, and practices that have shown promise in leading to transformative learning around gender equality, and in particular, what has worked in engaging adolescent boys; and 2) what has enabled promising approaches to be adopted at scale. These insights are grounded in wider literature on education for social change, on effective teacher education, and on implementation science literature on transforming systems to institutionalise gender equality curricula. Specifically, the study draws on anti-racist, human rights and peace education and considers how the gender-transformative education field can build on insights from these experiences in addressing issues on which students, teachers and wider society are often strongly polarised, and to motivate change. Alongside suggestions emerging from the study for implementing gender-transformative education at scale, the audience will be invited to share insights from their experiences.

Authors

• Rachel Marcus, ODI

• Sophia M D'Angelo, Education.org