Program description
Better evidence on how to help men engage in preventing gendered violence is key to solving this entrenched social problem. The Willing, capable and confident: Men, masculinities and the prevention of violence against women report (August 2024) explores men’s perspectives about the ways they navigate, challenge or conform to masculine norms across different aspects of their lives, and what this tells us about how to support their engagement in violence prevention.
Willing, capable and confident centres on Respect Victoria’s analysis of focus groups with men aged 18 to 45 that were designed to provide deeper insight into men’s attitudes and behaviours related to masculine norms. These focus group discussions were conducted as part of the 2024 Man Box study, a research project led by The Men’s Project, an initiative of Jesuit Social Services, in partnership with Respect Victoria.
Key findings
Men were asked about the effects of social pressure to conform to masculine norms, such as:
- acting tough and being stoic, and how this can affect men seeking help
- being the breadwinner in heterosexual relationships
- compliance with heteronormative and heterosexual masculine norms, and how this varies for straight and gay, bi+ and queer men.
Most participants described how concerns of social exclusion, judgement or rejection influenced how they choose to either conform to or resist masculine norms. Where men feel greater pressure to conform to harmful gender norms, the value they place on maintaining relationships can mean that they dismiss, ignore, reinforce or encourage violence-supporting attitudes and behaviours. This demonstrates how engaging men in primary prevention means acknowledging the richness of their relationships and how protecting a sense of belonging can shape their behaviours.
The report presents five key opportunities for building men’s willingness, capability and confidence to address the gendered drivers of violence against women:
- Men see and understand the benefits of emotionally supportive, safe and equitable intimate partner relationships.
- Fathers understand how gender norms can influence their parenting and impact their children, and many fathers feel strongly motivated to parent in less rigidly gendered ways than their fathers did.
- Men’s families and social networks can support them to let go of harmful ideas about what it means to be a man.
- Men’s increased openness to discuss their mental health can be built upon with gender-transformative primary prevention efforts.
- Workplaces can provide opportunities to challenge harmful ideas about what it means to be a man.
Key takeaways
Willing, capable and confident supports existing research and practice evidence demonstrating that while individual attitudinal change is an important aspect of prevention, this alone may not be sufficient to change men’s behaviour, given the strong and complex interplay of broader social norms and practices in Australia around masculinity or masculinities. This elevates the importance of concurrent resourcing for policy and practice efforts that affect structural, institutional and organisational change related to prevention efforts.