Do Arab men support gender equality? What challenges do they face in their daily lives? What does it mean to be a man in the Middle East and North Africa in 2017? These are some of the questions that 10,000 men and women across Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon and the Palestinian territories were asked in the International Men and Gender Equality Study in the Middle East and North Africa (IMAGES MENA).
The report by gender equality organization Promundo and UN Women claims to be the most extensive comparative study of men related to gender equality ever undertaken in the region.
‘Crisis of masculinity’
In Morocco, men and women talked about a “crisis of masculinity” with both genders struggling to align their roles and rights in their public and private lives.
A woman in her 20s was quoted in the report as saying that Moroccan society was “no longer anchored in tradition, but not in modernity either.”
“We are between the two without knowing where to place ourselves … we have not yet fully grasped that if we believe ourselves to be the same, equal, in everything, that this means a redistribution of (gender) roles.”
In qualitative discussions, men noted various legislative changes that promoted women’s rights and said it opened doors for women to be “selfish” and put “work and rights ahead of husbands and family.”
A male student in his 20s told researchers: “The man has lost his masculinity with these new (gender equality) laws that give more advantages and freedom to women.”
Within the study, high rates of domestic violence were also reported, with 45% of Egyptian men admitting they had been violent towards their wives. Elsewhere, it was between 8% and 17%.
Men from wealth, education are ‘more gender equitable’
Each region was ranked on the Gender Equitable Men (GEM) scale — with zero indicating the least equitable views and three reflecting the most equitable views.
Participants in Egypt received the lowest scores — 0.9 for men and 1.3 for women — while respondents in Lebanon received the highest: at 1.7 for men and 1.9 for women out of an equitable score of 3.
While the United States has not yet been ranked on the GEM scale, the United Nations Development Program has carried out a similar ranking system, called the Gender Inequality Index (GII). Zero indicates equality, and one inequality.
The US ranked 0.203 on the scale, while Lebanon and Egypt ranked 0.381 and 0.565 respectively
Generally, in the UN study, men from wealthier households, who had received higher education, whose mothers were more educated and/or whose fathers carried out traditional female household tasks were more likely to hold gender-equitable attitudes.
Yet, while younger women had more progressive views than older women, attitudes did not seem to differ substantially across male age ranges in Egypt, Morocco and the Palestinian territories.
Among Palestinians, however, 75% of men and nearly 87% of women agreed that “we as Palestinians need to do more to promote the equality of women and men.”
Yet, later into the report Palestinian men admitted they were fearful of gender equality — with men twice as likely as women to agree that “more rights for women mean that men lose out.”
Fatherhood and marriage
When it comes to marriage and fatherhood, men told stories of tenderness and deep caring towards their families and said they supported their daughters choosing their own spouses.
The majority of Palestinian men (88%) and women (82%) believed that a marriage match should ultimately be decided by a couple, not their family.
However a large majority of men — ranging between 62% in Morocco and 96% in Egypt — said they expected to control their wives’ personal freedoms, from what they wear and where they go, to when the couple have sex.
Women confirmed that their husbands sought to control them in these ways.
Source: CNN. Read full article here.
10 May, 2017
