Gender Day Revelation: Learning About Masculinity in Humanitarian Projects

From gender day I was surprised to learn about the current learning on masculinity. I've 'mainstreamed' gender in many of the humanitarian projects I've worked on. But my focus has been on targeting interventions to the specific needs of girls and women instead of treating all beneficiaries as monolithic.

For example, five years ago I was working on a project with another international organization focused on delivering a response for internally displaced persons in Gambella, Ethiopia. I recall sitting in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis with a male colleague who had just crafted a proposal to provide disposable sanitary pads for internally displaced girls and women, congratulating him on the brilliance of the idea.

I ended up working on the project for a short period of time in Gambella six months later. During a donor visit to evaluate the project I unsuccessfully justified disposables rather than washable pads had been chosen. It should not come as a surprise that a couple of men hatching a plan in the Ethiopian capital city of Addis to meet the needs of rural girls and women in Gambella was a mostly a failure.

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The gender day was illuminative in describing the centrality to gender to everything. I came to understand much better how hegemonic masculinity traps women and also some men. Connell describes the family unit with labour divided into paid public work and unpaid domestic work (Connell 1987: 31).

The family that I grew up was no exception. Though my life with my family can be described as happy childhood, labour was more gender segregated than the families of most of my classmates.

My father earned a wage and my mother stayed at home and looked after the house and children.

The authority of men comes from a gender order complex that demonstrates itself in relationships and institutions including the family (Donovan 1998: 838). And despite the appearance of consensus decisions making, patriarchy with significantly uneven divisions of labour ruled the day.

Children learn gender characteristics early on and what is considered to be appropriate for each gender (Thomson 2002: 168). I found out early in my life, what type of masculinity was expected. When I was in the third grade, my classmates and I were inside one day during the time of recess. I recall throwing a doll back and forth with a couple of the girls like it was a ball which was pretty fun.

When the teacher came back into the room. She did not lecture me over being loud and rambunctious is the class only, but asked me a question 'Do boys play with dolls? What are you doing playing with dolls?' I was deeply embarrassed and could think of no response.

A few years later, my parents asked me why the incident had been so disturbing to me, and still was unable to articulate exactly what I felt and why I felt it. While the incident seems so trivial, the shame at that moment came from crossing a gender line and transgressing bounded gender behavioural expectations of me as a boy (Harland et al 2005: 2).

But looking back now, I see that experience in a different light. Having grown up in a conservative family with three brothers, acceptable behaviour was set though I did not rebel against against the norms set by my experience. The institutions including the school and church enforced strict guidelines in line with the hegemonic masculinity.