Action for Equality- Raise Gender Equitable Boys

Gender Based Violence and Discrimination (GBVD) continues to be a reality even in the 21st century. According to the National Family Health Survey (NFHS-4), within the age group of 15-49,  around 30% of women in India have experienced physical violence and 6% have experienced sexual violence at least once. Gender equality indicators have also declined recently; India has slipped 28 places to rank 140th among 156 countries in the World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2021. The COVID-19 pandemic has adversely affected, not only health and healthcare, but also GBVD. Oxfam India analysis indicated a rise in domestic violence as well a decline in the ability of victims to seek help during the 2020 lockdown.

Gender equality is a basic human right. Societies that value women and men as equal are safer, healthier and prosperous. However it is not enough to empower and educate women. Boys and young men have to be included in the process of transforming gender roles, patriarchal attitudes, beliefs, and behaviours that drive inequality as well. We, at the Equal Community Foundation, believe that it is critical to engage boys to bring about systemic change towards a more equitable society and we need your support.

Not every boy is part of a problem but every boy can be part of the solution!

ECF’s Action for Equality programs aims to engage adolescent boys in a gender-transformative programme and to enable them to identify, challenge and change gender norms.

Our intensive direct interventions with adolescent boys and young men in low-income communities are intended to bring about gender equitable changes in these boys’ and men’s attitudes and behaviours and to endow them with the skills, knowledge and motivation to bring about gender equitable changes within their families, peer groups, schools, colleges, workplaces and communities. Our ultimate goal is to reduce Gender Based Violence and Discrimination within these communities. 

We also engage other stakeholders such as women and girls from the community, social sector organisations, teachers and students to ensure that more boys and men have the opportunity engage in gender transformative programmes and to our better each our goal to reduce Gender Based Violence and Discrimination.

Your contribution will help us reach out to more and more adolescent boys and young men and enable them to identify, challenge and change gender norms.

Shivraj lives in a community where street sexual harassment, domestic violence and child marriage are common. Prior to his participation in AfE, Shivraj and his friends would loiter in groups and harass women and girls. 

In AfE, Shivraj was given the opportunity to critically reflect on gender and human rights issues within his community, as well as to consider his own part in propagating these issues. Through these sessions Shivraj went on to recognise the impact his actions had on the welfare of women and girls around him, and worked, first to spread awareness amongst his community and family members of the harm done by practices like child marriage, dowry and substance abuse as a teenager, and then to organising groups of young men that would work together to bring about gender-equitable change as an adult. 

Details of Shivraj’s transformation can be found in this  Logical Indian interview: https://thelogicalindian.com/my-story/my-story-when-a-girl-passed-by-i-would-whistle/

Learn more about our work at www.ecf.org.in