Men for Gender Equality Sweden (Män för Jämställdhet)
About Men for Gender Equality Sweden
Men for Gender Equality Sweden is a Swedish non-governmental organisation in the field of engaging men and boys in gender equality and violence prevention. The Swedish name of the organization is Män för Jämställdhet. Men for Gender Equality focuses on social norms of masculinities; how they are formed, how they influence society, relations and individuals, and how they can be reformed to contribute to gender equality, freedom from violence and better health for women, girls, boys and men.
Origins
Men for Gender Equality was originally formed as a network of men taking a stand against men’s violence against women. The initiative to form the network was taken 1993 by the men on the board of Save the Children Sweden. An article with a call on men to organize against men’s violence against women was published in one of the national newpapers. This led to the formation of the Male Network against Men’s Violence Against Women, or in short the Male Network (in Swedish: Manliga nätverket). From the very beginning, more than 2 500 men across the country joined the network.
In 1999 the network was converted into a formal organisation. Membership was defined to be open to everyone who supports the ideas and standpoints of the organisation. Since then, the membership body is made up of both women and men.
In 2006 the name of the organisation was changed to Men for Gender Equality (Män för Jämställdhet).
Activities
The activities of Men for Gender Equality comprise advocacy, networking, public-awareness, training as well as the development and delivery of services and programmes for primary prevention of violence directed towards individual men and boys as well as groups of men and boys.
Examples of services and programmes are for instance Killfrågor.se (BoysQuestions.com in English) and Machofabriken (The Macho Factory in English). Killfrågor.se is a site offering boys and young men counselling services via chat or email. Machofabriken is a film-clip-based program on masculinities and gender equality for middle schools. Furthermore, Men for Gender Equality develops and delivers father-to-be group education programmes in the programme “Jämt föräldraskap” (Gender Equal Parenting).
During the period of 2010-2014 a new gender-transformative primary violence prevention programme for middle and high schools is being developed. The name of the development project is Freedom from violence (Frihet från våld), and it is funded by the Swedish Inheritance Fund.
From 2014-2017 Men for Gender Equality works together with the organisations Crossing Boarders and Femtastic in a project called “Fatta Man” (Men Understand). The project aims at collecting stories from boys and men around sexual violence in order for men to get a space to speak out.
Organisation
The activities of Men for Gender Equality are performed by volunteers and/or by professional staff. The organisation has a national office in Stockholm, Sweden , with 18 employees (July 2014). Funding is obtained from Swedish government agencies and from different independent foundations.
The organisation has a board made up of nine members. The board is elected by member representatives at the annual meeting held every year.
Individual members of the organisation are locally organised in local associations. In some places, for instance in Gothenburg, local associations have funding from local municiplalities and employed staff.
International work
Men for Gender Equality is member of the Steering Committee and Executive Committee of the global alliance MenEngage and is regional coordinator of the regional MenEngage network in Europe as well as the Nordic MenEngage network.
Men for Gender Equality is partner in the international MenCare Campaign on the promotion of men’s and fathers’ engagment in care work.
Furthermore, Men for Gender Equality runs projects together with regional and national partners in for instance Russia, Southern Africa and Belarus on gender equal fatherhood and violence prevention.
References
- Men for Gender Equality Sweden: http://www.mfj.se
- Killfrågor.se: http://www.killfragor.se
- Machofabriken: http://www.machofabriken.se
- MenEngage: http://www.menengage.org
- The MenCare Campaign: http://www.men-care.org
See also
- Engaging Men and Boys to Transform Discriminatory Social Norms Online Discussion – from 22-31 October 2012