What Kind of Man Do You Want to Be? campaign background

This document sets out the approach that Respect Victoria has used to develop our new campaign, What Kind of Man Do You Want to Be? This is the ninth social change campaign from Respect Victoria, the state’s agency for the primary prevention of violence against women and family violence.

The campaign features the voices of ordinary Victorian men sharing personal perspectives about how the social pressures to be a particular kind of man can challenge and harm them and those around them.  

Designed to focus primarily on Victorian men as a core audience, this campaign is about connecting Victorian men to the issue of gendered violence, particularly men’s violence against women.

Our design approach is informed by qualitative and quantitative findings from the Man Box 2024 study,(3, 4) which showed that a significant number of men who participated in the study talked about their willingness to prevent or repair negative impacts of harmful masculine norms in their lives. However, they were sometimes not sure of their capability to do this, or they lacked confidence to take action to prevent the harmful impacts of these masculine norms. The campaign is also backed by focus group research and consultation with Victorians of all genders about how to creatively engage men in conversations about prevention of family and gendered violence. It has been developed with comprehensive input from an expert panel of practitioners and researchers with deep knowledge and experience in working with men to prevent gendered violence.

The campaign features stories of how real Victorian men have navigated social pressures and expectations of masculinities. Their stories include the ways they have navigated acting tough, hiding their vulnerabilities, and fitting into social situations even when they don’t agree with the behaviours of those around them, and describing how they have interrupted cycles of intergenerational violence for themselves and their families. It is a new approach to our campaign development and one that we hope will contribute to the growing body of evidence focused on including men in violence prevention efforts.  

An important action to address violence against women, and gendered violence more broadly, is supporting men and boys to develop healthier forms of masculinities for themselves and with their colleagues, family members and friends. Another is to challenge the gender stereotypes that make family and gendered violence in any form seem excusable or ‘not that bad’. This campaign is about helping men to see where they can take action – in ways big and small – by first asking them to reflect on how social pressures related to manhood play out in their lives.  

The campaign has been developed to raise and explore the intense and pervasive social pressures for men to conform to often idealised forms of manhood that can lead to or condone violence. For instance, social pressures to:  

• always act tough, even if you feel scared
• be in control, dominant and controlling  
• be sexually active and attractive, particularly with cisgender women – even to the extent of:  
  • being homophobic or transphobic to men who are attracted to other men or to transgender people
  • men feeling that they need to hide who they’re attracted to or who they’re in relationships with.(3, 6)  

These pressures can be easily recognised as being linked to violence and harm. However, these aren’t the only pressures of masculinity that are explored in the campaign. It also explores pressures like:  

• stoicism, suppressing emotions and not showing vulnerability
• expectations of financial success
• the intergenerational impacts of dominance and control as harmful forms of masculinity.

For more than a year, we have worked with experts in communications including multicultural communications, primary prevention of family and gendered violence, masculinities and behaviour change to help us develop a campaign that is evidence-based and relevant to diverse audiences across the state.  

We have also run focus groups across Victoria with men to understand how they relate to the issue of men’s violence against women, how they want to be engaged in prevention efforts, and what would work to engage them meaningfully in a campaign that asks them to think about their stake in preventing gendered violence. Likewise, we have tested the campaign approach and creative with focus groups of Victorian women to test their reactions to and understanding of the campaign goal.  

We conducted community consultations with Victorian men from racialised communities to hear from them how the campaign can work within their communities – what’s relevant, culturally appropriate and will help engage them through personal and social connection to the issue of gendered violence. This will allow us to tailor the campaign to specific audiences from different cultural backgrounds in early 2026.  

The campaign had a soft launch on social media via Respect Victoria’s organic channels in late December 2024. A similar paid social media campaign in March 2025 reached more than 1 million people. The next stage (launched June 2025) showcases video content of Victorian men reflecting on the impacts of social pressures related to masculinity and how they have navigated these pressures, often passed through generations of their families. Each man tells their story of exploring what man they want to be for their partner, family, community and for themselves.  

The Victorian and national policy violence prevention frameworks show that engaging men is a critical step in our nation’s ability to end violence against women and children within a generation.(7-9)  

There is a strong correlation between men’s agreement with harmful forms of masculinity and their perpetration of gendered violence.(3)  

Forms of masculinity that promote control and violence are most often associated with supporting the perpetration of violence against women and many forms of gendered violence.(10) Men who support the most stereotypically rigid ideals of masculinity  – such as needing to act tough, be dominant, hide feedings and be in control  – are 17 times more likely than those who least support these ideas to say they have hit a partner.(3)

However, the 2021 National Community Attitudes Survey found that when it comes to attitudes towards violence against women in Australia, men are less likely to see violence against women as a problem and do not see the issue as personally relevant to them.(11)  Sharing men’s experiences of recognising and navigating social pressures, then supporting them to reflect on changes they would like to make for themselves and those around them is one way of demonstrating this relevance. This is a crucial early step towards men’s active engagement and leadership in prevention efforts.(5)

Engagement can mean men getting involved in prevention initiatives in their communities and workplaces. It can also mean men demonstrating how freeing it is to move away from social norms that highlight violence, dominance and control as natural ways of being a man in their everyday behaviours, interactions, and expectations for others. Collectively and individually, this type of action can make powerful contributions to resetting social expectations of masculinities and in doing so, help to create safer and healthier communities.

Traditionally, women have been Respect Victoria’s most strongly engaged audience – a cohort that is no less important. However, it is also critical that our campaigns communicate with men in ways that are meaningful and compelling for them. We know from Australian research (12, 13) and from Respect Victoria’s campaign evaluations that men feel less connected to prevention efforts than women. This is true even though most Australian men want to be involved in taking action to address the gendered drivers of violence – they just don’t how or what to do.(4, 14) To help address this gap, we have designed our current campaign to centre compassion and accountability in equal measure.  

Compassion is important because focus group participants told us that many of the men in their lives struggle to feel secure in their place in families and communities. We heard that being a man today can feel like wading through confusing and even conflicting messages about the best way to move through the world. Men may be subject to multiple pressures from sexist cultures in online gaming communities and from social media content and other online interactions, within peer groups where they live, work, learn and play, and through the media.  

Men in the focus groups reported that they are often acutely aware of social expectations to be the breadwinner in their household, to lead and be calm whatever they are facing, and felt that they are often seen as villains by broader society. They said that this contributed to a sense that they are never good enough, or that they were seen as a violent offender or person who harms women because of other men’s actions. This could lead to defensiveness and feelings of being ‘shamed’ for being a man.  

The same dynamics have been documented elsewhere as contributing to men’s resistance to taking actions to address the gendered drivers of violence.(15) In accounts from focus group participants and even from men featured in the campaign, this can be expressed as reluctance to explore or reflect on what meaningful changes they could and should make as men to progress collective efforts to prevent family and gendered violence across communities.

A challenge for the campaign, then, was to accept men’s explanations for their disengagement from many primary prevention calls to action – and then encourage them to be curious about their own agency and capability to help shape a different narrative and reality for themselves and for men around them.  

Respect Victoria’s report, Willing, capable and confident: men, masculinities and the prevention of violence against women demonstrates the range of opportunties for men to take action, and that many are already exploring or actively making positive change. Men talked about the different ways they were working to challenge the gendered dynamics that drive violence against women in their intimate partnerships, as fathers, and within social and family groups. They talked about how they were increasingly resisting social scripts that say men shouldn’t process their emotions, and how they were participating in activities to bolster their mental well-being in their offices, worksites, classrooms and clubs.(4)

This campaign will add to this existing momentum for change by increasing the reach of this message  and collective effort. Further, it deepens opportunties for men to think about accountability, as the men featured in the campaign bravely set an example for Victorian men to take accountability for past behaviour, in real and in online settings, because they were trying to conform to social pressures that said they should be more dominant, more ‘macho,’ or less emotional. It asks men to be accountable for their own behaviours and choices to challenge or conform to stereotypical gender roles, and to be part of strengthening the kinds of Victorian communities where everyone is safe and respected, regardless of gender.

From a creative perspective, we asked Victorians, specifically men in the focus groups, how they would want a campaign to engage them in exploring masculinities.  

They told us that they want a campaign to:  

• Speak to the diversity of Victorian men. The campaign needs to be truly representative of ages, cultures, lifestyles, life stages and use multiple stories and ways of communicating, speaking to them where they are, and featuring people they could identify with.
• Reflect reality. They don’t want a glossy advertising campaign. They want it to feature real people and real stories, not celebrities.
• Be where they are. That is, online, and combating the content that the algorithms inevitably send to them on TikTok and similar.  
• Speak to them with what they care about – family, friends, work and life.

Essentially, Victorian men in the focus groups told us is that they want a campaign that takes a pathway approach – leading with making visible the social pressures to enact harmful forms of masculinity, helping them to make the link between these pressures and violence occurring, and provide them with the tools to question and safely challenge these pressures related to manhood.  

This campaign is laying the groundwork that will assist with challenging, resetting and ultimately holding in place new social norms of masculinity that are supportive of prevention and healthier lives for all Victorians. It is designed to support and complement the work focused on masculinities and boys and men’s social and emotional wellbeing that is happening across Victoria, especially in schools, sporting clubs and workplaces.