Issue details

To enable the Positive Masculinities Project to move forward to stage 2 delivery utilising the lessons learned in stage 1. Stage 1 of the project was funded by the Integrated Care Board.

Stage 1: Of the project considered opportunities and challenges. Reflecting and articulating the understanding of how boys and men in Greater Manchester see masculinities and how they think. This has helped to identify both the risk and protective factors.
This funding will move the project from stage 1 where the Positive Masculinities (PM) project built a clearer understanding about the opportunities and challenges around positive masculinities. PM have spent the past year listening to what boys and men think about masculinities. The long-term goal is to use a greater understanding to generate ideas that will significantly reduce gender-based violence.
The project has taken a community engagement approach in several localities in Greater Manchester:
• Bolton (Great Lever, Queen’s Park, Rumworth)
• Salford (Little Hulton, Walkden)
Within these locations, PM have engaged a wide diversity of over 600 boys and 2,300 men in conversation around their perceptions of masculinities to understand their experiences, socialisation and motivators towards the way that they think and behave.

Stage 2: Will involve Generating Ideas.
This will involve creative thinking to develop and explore ideas about effective engagement and dialogue with boys and men. In line with GoodLives GM it might involve ideas around systems change, stage 2 might lead to redefining purpose.
From the learning and consequent theory of change from stage 1, PM have developed several ideas to be tested to see what does – and does not – affect male thinking and behaviour, including with regard to reducing gender-based violence. The ideas are:

• Exploring fatherhood and the role of fathers: PMs hypothesis is that fatherhood is a major motivator in shifting male thinking and behaviour, including in relation to women and girls. A focus on fatherhood encourages men to show up better for women and girls, and creates better behaviours and socialisation with boys.
• Identifying a range of spaces to address loneliness and isolation: PMs hypothesis is that, if men have more spaces to positively engage with peers, they would develop better habits and form healthier relationships and behaviours, reducing feelings of loneliness and isolation that can result in negative behaviours towards themselves and those around them, such as women and girls.
• Shifting mindset and language: PMs hypothesis is that reframing traditionally ‘masculine’ words such as strength, which pressure boys and men to think in certain ways, would greater scope for them to adopt different definitions, and therefore better thinking and behaviour.

Wider Applicability of the Learning:
Beyond the reduction of gender-based violence, the emerging learning about masculinities from the project suggests wider applicability in fields that see a disproportionate impact by or on boys and men, such as:

• educational achievements
• placement in children’s homes
• mental illness
• alcohol dependency & substance misuse
• adults ‘going missing’
• rough sleeping
• violent crime
• imprisonment
• suicide

Positive Masculinities are seeking future funding from a range of sources to support their work for the further stages of the project.